Below is the story of a beautiful couple/family and their heart-breaking, but amazing, story. At EvesTrust we see some incredible stories, all deserving of a Dream, whether it be big or something more personal, but some give us the chance to make a real lasting impact. The below allowed us to help unite a family that has been experiencing the toughest start to their family life. This a true story, with real people, that your support has given us the tools to help:
“Me and Catalin were enjoying being new parents to our beautiful Octavia and looking forward to the future. I was ready to go to university and Catalin started working the new contract job he’d secured about 5 months ago. During that job he stated complaining about his head hurting. At the time I just put down to working too much, combined with the sleepless nights you get with a new baby. The headaches unfortunately started to get worse, even after the doctor had advised him to take pain killers as he didn’t consider him to have any worrying symptoms. This did not work and Catalin became much worse as he started being sick and constantly looked fatigued and out of it. I called the doctors back who told us to go to A&E. They finally sent us for a scan which revealed a mass. It was all such a shock, I had the baby with me as we didn’t expect to be there long, and I didn’t have childcare. The Doncaster hospital was so supportive with us having the baby and even helped entertain her while we received the bad news, something I’m extremely grateful for.
Catalin then got moved to Sheffield where it was confirmed the mass found on the scan was a tumour. They needed to operate, which was hard to hear, all the risks, all the negative possibilities that could happen.
The operation however went great, causing just a little ill-effect to the right-hand side of his body. However, he did forget most of his memories with Octavia, which was so sad. I had to show him pictures of the birth we had taken to help him to remember that massive day and lots of her life so far. This was by far the hardest part for me as to complicate things, he also lost his ability to communicate effectively in English. As he is Romanian, losing the memory of learning the English language meant we couldn’t speak properly together for some time.
The time after the operation also brought some medical hurdles as he started to experience problems with swelling in his brain. He started a treatment of steroids to attempt to control the swelling, which thankfully had a positive effect.
So now, over a month since the operation he is nearly back to himself, his English has improved, and his walking is near enough back to normal. Now we have to wait and see, keep our fingers crossed and see what happens with the radiotherapy treatment set to treat the grade four glioblastoma. Despite the operation being a success, we’re told the condition is incurable, leaving us just praying for time. Time to spend together, time as a family and time to create some memories. We’re told there is around a 12-24 months life expectancy which is naturally very difficult to get our heads around. We must think of our 8-month-old daughter as we were just starting our life as a family.
Our Dream was to be married, to complete our family, for us and for Octavia. Since the moment me and Catalin have been engaged, we have spoken about what our wedding would be like. Unfortunately, the recent events and learning about his cancer, we simply didn’t think this was possible. However, with the amazing help from The Eve Merton Dreams Trust the day was even better than I imagined. I cannot put into words of how much we appreciate what everyone has done for our special day. The Eve Merton’s Trust, and especially their Dreams Manager Clynton (who helped organise our special day) made our wedding such a magical day, full of love, laughter and happiness, which we needed! The day was surrounded by with our close friends and family which was truly amazing, and we cannot thank you all enough. Our dream wedding, despite everything, came true……we’re determined to make the most of our time and pray the treatment, which started just two days before the wedding, could grant us some more.”
#dreammaker
