How incurable brain cancer brought a family closer together; one woman’s courageous battle continues as she credits her family’s love
- After an eye test led to a diagnosis of a brain tumour, Amanda Schofield felt like she had been hit by a tsunami
- With huge support from her husband and family, she continues to fight and lives each day to the full
Amanda Schofield, a former student at Hong Kong’s Island School, class of ’92, never dreamed that going to her 10th anniversary school reunion in London in 2002 would reconnect her with the former head boy, Sam Schofield, and marrying him three years later.
There was a nod to their shared Hong Kong history at their wedding reception, with orchid arrangements on tables named after MTR stations.
Eighteen years later, in March 2020, their reunion helped Schofield through the worst nightmare of her life.
“I’d been having headaches and my local GP, in Beckenham, Kent, suggested I book an eye test, which I did on March 7, 2020. When it came to the peripheral test, the examiner looked concerned and his manager said my reaction indicated that I might have had a stroke,” says Schofield, 46. The mother of two daughters, Elinor aged 14 and Eva aged 10, was rushed to the nearest hospital, where a CAT scan found lesions on her brain.
“Everything happened so quickly,” she says. “ I was admitted to the general ward for an overnight stay, then transferred to King’s College Hospital in London and wheeled in on a stretcher.”
Schofield was admitted to the hospital’s high dependency unit, and went through various assessments and medical interventions before she was diagnosed with a grade 4 glioblastoma – an aggressive malignant brain tumour. She was told she needed to have an immediate craniotomy: the temporary removal of part of her skull so her brain could be examined and the tumour removed.
