In October 2019, while five months pregnant with his first child, we were given the devastating news that my husband, Robert Vivash, had a brain tumour.

Eager to see his child born and to support me in having her, he delayed his operation with the guidance of his medical team at Queens Square, until March 2020.

Covid struck and it was further delayed but went ahead in September 2020 for a gruelling 12 hours, during which he bravely opted to be awake as the tumour was in the speech and movement area of his brain.

Unfortunately, it didn’t pay off as Robert suffered a stroke, leaving him with language difficulties, which he then had to overcome through weeks of speech and language therapy. On the plus side we were given the news that the tumour was grade 2 and required no further treatment.

Life went somewhat back to normal, although with Covid in the mix and Rob being considered vulnerable, he couldn’t quite get back to his fun loving lifestyle but tried his best to make the most of things as he always did.

Sadly, it was all short lived when, in May 2021, Rob started displaying worrying symptoms and ended up having emergency surgery for a blood clot on his brain that then revealed the tumour had returned as a grade 4 glioblastoma, much quicker progression than expected by his team.

Never one to give up easily, he started six weeks of radiotherapy, followed by a year long schedule of a higher dose of chemotherapy.

He sailed through the first six cycles with fatigue as his only side effect, hardly surprising as, never work shy, he insisted on continuing to work throughout.

He enjoyed a second Christmas and birthday with our daughter, Amelia, before tragedy struck again in March this year.

He was diagnosed with the tumour cells having spread to his spine, a very rare and little known about complication, for which there is no cure.

Once again, determined to give us all more time together, he agreed to a much stronger course of treatment, made up of three different types of chemotherapy simultaneously.

Unfortunately the stronger treatment made him very unwell and masked the symptoms of the tumour getting ever worse.

On 1st June, following a long hospital stay then time in a hospice, Robert passed away with his parents, 2 year old daughter and me by his side.

We are all heartbroken.

Robert was just 38 with so much ahead of him, not least seeing his daughter grow up as he was such a proud dad.

Brain tumours are the most common cause of cancer death in both children and adults under the age of 40 yet only 1% of the national spend on cancer research is put towards brain tumour research.

We are hoping to raise money in Robert’s name towards further research so other families may avoid such devastation and other children like Amelia don’t have to grow up without a parent, nor parents without their children.

Robert Vivash

1983-2022