Ben Cornforth was 21 when he had a seizure at his university house
A man who believed he was having the 'worst hangover possible' was given a devastating diagnosis after a sudden seizure saw him rushed to hospital.
Ben Cornforth was just 21 in February 2023 when he had a seizure at his university house in Nottingham. He said he was watching TV with his housemates when he suddenly 'couldn't follow what was happening on the show and couldn't speak'. He said: 'I felt totally out of it and dizzy. When I went to the toilet, the room felt like it was spinning and I fell over.
Click here to get the biggest stories straight to your inbox in our Daily Newsletter 'I lived with my girlfriend at the time, so I said to her, 'I don't want to alarm you, but I can't talk'. But I was speaking slowly and I wasn't coherent. I was also mixing up words.
'At first, I tried to hide the issues because I'd been drinking the night before, so I thought I was just having the worst hangover possible. ' However, Ben's friends spotted his speech issues and became concerned he was having a stroke, causing them to call 111. Ben was taken to hospital by ambulance, where he was told that he'd have to stay the night following a CT scan.
The now 24-year-old said: 'When we were called into a room, I was told there was something on my brain that wasn't supposed to be there.
'Doctors suspected it was a cyst, so I called my parents so they could travel up to Nottingham – it was really difficult having to phone my mum to tell her what had happened. I had an MRI two days later.
' Two weeks later, Ben was told he had a benign tumour on his language centre, which had caused the speech issues during his suspected seizure. He was told the tumour had likely been there for most of his life and that the safest thing to do was to leave it. He added: 'The fact it was always there didn't make a massive difference; it was just good news at this point, given how bad it could have been.
' Ben was given anti-seizure medication and went back to university to try and carry on with life as normal - but he soon suffered two more seizures. A follow-up scan revealed activity in the tumour and he would need brain surgery. In May 2023, Ben underwent a six-hour craniotomy surgery, a procedure where a portion of the skull is temporarily removed to access the brain – during which he had to be awake.
He said: 'They said they'd take as much of the tumour as possible, but they couldn't take anything off my brain, so they got as close to the brain as they could.
'They would prod a piece of the tumour with the logic that if I stopped talking, they couldn't cut that. They explained they'd do a biopsy on it afterwards.
'The surgery took five to six hours and I was asleep for the first part when they were preparing to take the tumour out and then I was woken up and was conscious for two hours. 'When they were reattaching the piece of my skull and sewing me up, they gave me the option to go back to sleep but I stayed awake.
' Ben said he suffered from side effects after the surgery, including struggling with conversations and frequently having to ask people to repeat themselves, though doctors assured him all the issues were normal and they subsided after a week. However, two weeks after surgery, Ben's biopsy results revealed he had stage 4 brain cancer and he would need six weeks of radiotherapy and chemotherapy.
It wasn't until he moved to Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham, to be closer to his family, that Ben really understood the severity of his cancer. He added: 'I was told I was in grade four, but I didn't really understand what that meant until my meeting at QE.
' After six weeks of combined radiotherapy and chemotherapy treatment, Ben also had a year of daily chemotherapy tablets. He said: 'My whole process going through treatment and with recovery was to always have things as normal as possible.
'I know I'll need more treatment in future, but for now I am off treatment and feeling happy and healthy. I try to make the most of every day.
' Ben has since joined Teenage Cancer Trust's Youth Advisory Group which helps to shape the support provided to young people. He also recently completed the London Marathon, raising more than £10,000 for the charity that helped him during and after treatment. You can donate to Ben's fundraising page here .
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