Jo Fuller never expected to sell her home simply to keep fighting for her life.
The 51-year-old dyslexia specialist from East Leake in Nottinghamshire collapsed on holiday in Australia on Boxing Day 2024. She woke on the dining room floor with paramedics and her husband Wayne looking down at her. Diagnosis followed swiftly: glioblastoma.
She underwent brain surgery in Australia. Three and a half months later she returned to the United Kingdom for radiotherapy and chemotherapy. When the first scan after treatment came back, the tumour had not shrunk. It had grown aggressively instead.
I realised the only way I could continue fighting for my life was to sell my house.
Fuller has now sold her home to pay for hyperthermia treatment. This experimental approach heats tumour tissue to between 42 and 43 degrees Celsius. She is also funding consultations with an alternative oncologist, repurposed medication and nutritional supplements. Hyperthermia is not routinely available or funded by the NHS for brain tumours.
Her story lays bare the reality for patients confronting one of the most lethal cancers in Britain. Around 3,200 people receive a glioblastoma diagnosis each year. Roughly one third survive beyond 12 months. Just 4 percent make it past five years. Brain tumours remain the leading cause of cancer death in people under 40.
Research funding tells its own tale. Since 2002 brain tumour work has attracted only 1 percent of national cancer research spending. The consequences are measured in lost time, lost options and lost lives. Standard treatments have barely shifted the odds for decades.
