Marcus Williams, a 35-year-old senior recruitment officer from Yatton in North Somerset, was enjoying life to the full with his wife, Laura, and daughter, Lola. Everything changed when he began experiencing intense headaches, fatigue, and unusual episodes, which were repeatedly misdiagnosed by GPs and doctors as vertigo. Despite his worsening condition and his wife Laura’s desperate pleas for help, doctors continued to dismiss his symptoms until a CT scan finally revealed a glioblastoma. He was rushed into emergency surgery to remove the large mass and is now undergoing chemotherapy and radiotherapy. Determined to make a difference, Laura is raising funds for Brain Tumour Research, hoping to improve awareness, treatment, and support for other families facing this disease.
Here’s Marcus’ story, as told by his wife, Laura…
Marcus is a truly wonderful person who brings warmth to everyone around him. He’s incredibly supportive of my career as a beauty entrepreneur and is a fantastic dad to our daughter, Lola. As a senior recruitment manager at Airbus in Filton, he leads a brilliant team, and they hold him in just as high regard as he does them. At that time, life felt perfect.
In August 2024, everything changed. Marcus developed intense headaches, relied on painkillers daily, and was constantly exhausted. He napped at lunch, went straight to bed after work, and barely ate. He also had what we called "episodes", a tingling in his right arm and a strange warm taste rising from his stomach. At first, they were weekly, then daily. We later learned they were seizures, so I booked a GP appointment.
The call was over the phone. I failed to understand how they could assess him without seeing him. When I described everything, they dismissed it as vertigo and prescribed tablets, ignoring his fatigue, loss of appetite, and vomiting. It was the start of a long, frustrating journey of misdiagnoses.
The next three weeks were a blur as the GP continued to push back on my concerns about Marcus. I lay awake at night, terrified I wouldn’t be able to wake him, and I was afraid to leave him, even to take Lola to school.
I was shocked to receive a text from the GP surgery advising us to go to A&E and refusing my calls.
Desperate, I called 111 when Marcus’s left eye suddenly went lazy, fearing he was having a stroke. But with 111, you have to wait six to eight hours for a callback, so I spent the entire day on edge. When they finally rang, they sent an ambulance, believing it could be a stroke.
When the paramedics arrived, they managed to wake him and refused to take him to the hospital, saying he seemed fine. I couldn’t believe my ears. Was anyone actually listening to me? They had originally planned to take him to the neurology team at Southmead Hospital for a full assessment, but after deciding he was well enough, they diverted us to Weston Hospital instead. We had already been to Weston, where they had diagnosed him with vertigo.
The doctor was barely with us for five minutes before he said it was vertigo again and pushed us out the door with more pills.
I pleaded with him to conduct tests and scans because vertigo didn’t match Marcus’s symptoms, but he refused. He prescribed more pills and gave him some exercises to do at home.
By this point, Marcus was projectile vomiting. It was an inset day, so Lola was home, and I was a wreck, feeling utterly helpless and ignored. He had started losing his speech and memory, to the point where he didn’t even recognise our little girl, let alone speak to her.
I called 999 in tears, telling them no one was taking us seriously. The ambulance took three hours to arrive because they didn’t consider it urgent. When they finally got here, the paramedics insisted he was fine, refused to take him to the hospital because they believed it wasn’t a medical emergency, and told me it was a matter for the GP. They speculated that his vomiting could be due to a blocked ear or even mental health issues, despite not properly checking him.
I completely lost it. How could they think he was fine when he was passed out on the sofa? How could they be so dismissive, downplaying his horrifying symptoms and speaking to me like I was wasting their time? These were the very people I was meant to trust in the scariest moment of our family’s life.
I showed them the message from the GP refusing to see him. The paramedics called the surgery, which took another three hours, even though GPs are supposed to respond to paramedics within 30 minutes.
The GP refused to see him, and I was told that if I wanted Marcus seen at the hospital, I would have to take him myself. That was impossible. I had Lola, and I wasn’t in any state to drive. I refused to accept this, packed some bags, and left Lola with a neighbour before getting into the ambulance with Marcus.
Five minutes down the road, the ambulance broke down.
It was now dark, and Marcus was still unconscious except when he was vomiting. For over an hour, the paramedics didn’t check on him. Instead, they were scrolling through social media, while the driver watched a film on her phone. It felt like a nightmare. No one seemed to care.
Eventually, a recovery vehicle arrived to fix the tyre, and we finally reached Weston Hospital three hours after setting off.
The moment we arrived, I confronted the doctor, demanding to know why no one had taken Marcus’s condition seriously. As I spoke, he projectile vomited across the bed. I asked why they still hadn’t done a CT scan. The doctor’s response? "Scans are expensive".
Finally, they agreed to scan him.
Ten minutes after the scan, the Head of A&E told me Marcus had a brain tumour.
The news was devastating but it confirmed that I was right to be angry and frustrated with how we were treated. For weeks, I had been dismissed and ignored, and now, a simple 10-minute scan had confirmed my worst fears. The tumour was massive, about 5cm wide. Suddenly, the medical team sprang into action, and he was blue-lit to Southmead Hospital for emergency surgery.
From that moment, everything moved incredibly fast. We were in the ambulance for just 15 minutes before arriving at Southmead, where the neurology team reviewed his scans. They told me the swelling in his brain was so severe that he might have only hours to live and would need emergency surgery.
A neurosurgeon was flown in from Newquay and he began operating on Marcus immediately – It took 12 hours to remove most of the tumour.
The surgery was successful in removing 98% of the tumour, but Marcus remained in ICU for five days. Later, we learned that Marcus had a glioblastoma, an aggressive, cancerous brain tumour. We were warned to expect memory loss, speech difficulties, and other challenges, so we brought in photos and his favourite snacks to help jog his memory.
Lola struggled to understand. She is only five years old and kept saying, "Daddy’s got a poorly head", but she didn’t grasp what that truly meant. She was devastated when I had to stay at the hospital. She didn’t know where I was or what was happening. Because it was half-term, she wasn’t in school, making things even harder.
She clung to me, afraid to let me out of her sight. She kept asking, "Why won’t Daddy play with me like he used to?" It broke my heart. He had always been the fun dad, the one who threw her around, played pillow fights, and did gymnastics on the floor with her. Now, he could only sit, quiet and tired.
Bit by bit, he started eating again and recalling things. By day two, he took a few steps. By day three, he remembered who he was.
We were so happy when he walked out of the hospital five days after his operation.
A nurse told us she had never seen anyone recover so quickly from this operation.
Marcus is now nearing the end of his six-week course of radiotherapy and chemotherapy at Bristol Royal Infirmary. He’s doing well, but he has started experiencing seizures since the surgery, which have worsened during treatment. He is on additional medication to manage them.
Now, we are trying to adjust to our new normal. Marcus is mostly bedbound, but Lola enjoys sitting next to him, doing her colouring and reading her books aloud to him. It’s a beautiful thing to see.
It’s shocking to see how underfunded research in brain tumours is, even though it affects thousands of people every year.
A diagnosis like this makes you realise – you’re a cancer family now. You expect support, but once you're in it, you see how little funding and progress there is. It’s frightening.
Despite everything, Marcus has been unbelievably strong and positive, a true trooper. He has had nurses dancing with him during treatment, Ibiza club music playing, and laughter filling the room. Even in the toughest moments, he has found a way to bring joy. He has turned an awful time into something full of light, and that says everything about the kind of person he is. We’ve published videos of loads of people dancing online with the tag #Dance4Marcus.
That’s why I’m taking on the 10K Steps a Day challenge with my best friend, Steph, and Marcus’s aunt, Wendy, to raise money for vital research. If even one pound helps find a cure or eases another family’s pain, it’s worth it. We’re also planning a skydive this summer to raise even more. My sister-in-law is doing a wing walk, and my mother-in-law is taking on an ice-cold water challenge. We truly want to do everything we can to help!
I was told I was hours away from losing my husband and dismissed by medical staff at every turn. Only research and a cure will stop others from suffering like we did, and I won’t stop fighting for that.
Laura Williams
February 2025
One in three people in the UK knows someone affected by a brain tumour. This disease is indiscriminate; it can affect anyone at any age. What’s more, brain tumours continue to kill more children and adults under the age of 40 than any other cancer yet, to date, just 1% of the national spend on cancer research has been allocated to this devastating disease since records began in 2002.
Brain Tumour Research is determined to change this.
If you have been inspired by Marcus’s story, you may like to make a donation via www.braintumourresearch.org/donate or leave a gift in your will via www.braintumourresearch.org/legacy
Together we will find a cure.