Thank you for taking the time to visit my JustGiving page and reading my story.

As many of you know, my dad, Ian Dennis, was diagnosed with a Grade 4 Glioblastoma (Multiforme, IDH ‘Wild’ type) in October 2022 following a series of seizures, investigations and finally surgery. What was originally a very small and unsuspecting mark on the scans ended up with a 12 – 18 month prognosis. Dad’s tumour was also unmethylated, meaning it was unlikely to respond to chemotherapy; however, working with the medical team dad decided to undergo almost 12 months of radiotherapy and chemotherapy in the hope this would improve his quality of life for the time he had left. Despite this effort, about a month after his last course of chemo and a year to the week that this all started, dad went into hospital following a seizure and we were told that the tumour had spread across his brain and we had “long weeks to short months” left.

With the help of partners, family and friends, we helped look after dad at home over the next few months and witnessed first-hand how utterly ruthless this form of cancer is. The cancer took away dad’s independence with his ability to understand, reason, talk and move. In the final weeks this resulted in him becoming bedbound, being limited to talking ‘gobbledegook’ (medically known as Aphasia) and eventually becoming unable to communicate, eat or drink by himself, or express what he was thinking or feeling. Many symptoms, like pain levels, became increasingly difficult to manage at home regardless of the help of the district nurses, palliative care team and care staff. For medical reasons dad was admitted to a hospice in February 2024 where he died a few days later, only a few days before his 63rd birthday, and almost 18-months after his diagnosis.

Having been with dad over the last 18-months, and for everyone involved in his care, it’s now much more understandable why the true impact of the progression of GBM on a patient and those around them isn’t widely spoken about. For those who knew dad, he in his own way made life interesting (and at times quite difficult!) over the last year and a half of his life. He took the cancer on with his usual dark humour (which only worsened as things progressed!) and did his best to take life by the horns in whatever way he could. His madness will certainly live on, and he’ll always be remembered by his eccentricities and quirks.

In the traditional Dennis fashion of moving things (not so) promptly on, the reason for this page is that I am taking part in The LAP with my partner Vladi and her sister Slavi on the 11th May 2024. The LAP is a 47-mile ultramarathon that goes around Lake Windermere in the Lake District. The course is all off-road and has around 2,500 metres of elevation. Not a small task! In doing so, we hope to raise some money towards the Brain Tumour Research charity who focus on research into finding cures for all types of brain tumours and seek to increase investment in brain tumour research.

Brain tumours kill more children and adults under the age of 40 than any other type of cancer. For GBM in particular, only 25% make it beyond a year and a mere 5% beyond 5-years. Despite this, only 1% of national spend on cancer research has been allocated to brain tumours (and obviously even less to GBM). It’s time this changed to help improve the prognosis and life quality of patients, but also those around them who are also impacted by the disease.

I do have to admit that my training programme has been more piecemeal than hoped given everything that has happened since Christmas, balancing training with caring, work and more recently dad’s death. I would still like to use this opportunity to raise money for Brain Tumour Research, but given the nature of the event there is always a chance of not finishing. If this puts you off contributing, then I completely get it, but for those that do, and if I / we don’t succeed, I can promise I’ll make it up in some other mad way!

Thanks again!