THE family of a woman who died of a brain tumour just months after getting married, has donated £50,000 to Cancer Research UK in her memory.
Charlotte Nicol, 32, died last month (July), just 13 weeks after being diagnosed.
Charlotte set up a Go Fund Me page called ‘Zero Sense of Tumour’ from her hospital bed. Contributions from friends, family and colleagues came flooding in and the £50,000 target was reached shortly after she passed away.
This week her widower James, from Hampstead, north London, donated the money to Cancer Research UK to help fund future research.
Charlotte was diagnosed with a grade four astrocytoma in April, just seven months on from the couple’s wedding day.’
James said: “Charlotte was incredibly kind and caring and spent a lot of her free time helping other people. She set up the Go Fund Me page the day after her first brain surgery – she just felt she needed to do something. And Charlotte was adamant that any money donated would be used for research and treatments for all cancers, not just brain tumours which are relatively rare. She wanted the money to help as many people as possible.”
Charlotte grew up in Leyland, Lancashire. When she was 20, she set off to travel the world. She spent time in Australia and then moved to New Zealand, where she met James, from Auckland in 2016.
The couple got engaged in 2019 and moved back to the UK, living in London. Charlotte worked at PwC as a manager in the firm’s Global New Ventures and Innovation team and James is a planner at media agency, Initiative.
James, 33 said: “We got married in December in a small ceremony in Antigua. International travel restrictions had made it difficult to plan anything so we just said, ‘why not?’ And just went and did it, just the two of us, and it was brilliant. We hadn’t been married long when we both got Covid. We got over it but Charlotte kept getting headaches and we just put them down to long Covid for a while.
“She was still functioning brilliantly at this point, just a headache that got worse and worse. Initially her GP said it could be down to stress and to take it easy. Then it all happened stupidly quickly. Charlotte got diagnosed on April 5th. In the space of a day she suddenly started feeling really dizzy and seeing lights and then tripping over and she had this numbness all the way down one side of her body and she couldn’t walk.”
A CT scan revealed a tumour the “size of an orange” and Charlotte was diagnosed with grade four astrocytoma. In the space of six weeks, she underwent five brain operations including a craniotomy – during which she had to be awake – that removed 95 per cent of the tumour.
But as she was due to start radiotherapy and chemotherapy treatment in June, a scan showed the tumour had grown back significantly.
James added: “We went from a 12-month treatment plan, to another one which would be the shortest course of extreme radiotherapy we possibly could, to another plan where all that we could do was to try and maximise Charlotte’s quality of life, all within a few days.
“From there Charlotte didn’t want to continue with the treatment as it was just prolonging life in a way that was incompatible with her values and way of living and enjoying life. When they did the biopsy, they said the tumour would have probably been growing slowly for years.”
Charlotte organised her own funeral and said goodbye to loved ones before passing away three weeks later, on July 7, at the Marie Curie Hospice in Hampstead near hers and James’s home.
James said: “I can’t do anything to change what has happened, but this is one thing I can do. I hope as many people as possible see the Go Fund Me page and continue to donate, however much they can, every penny counts to help research for everyone affected by cancer.”
Charlotte also encouraged people to leave money to Cancer Research UK in their will.
Director of Philanthropy at Cancer Research UK Chris Gethin, said: “We’re incredibly grateful to James and every single person who contributed to this generous donation in Charlotte’s memory. The overwhelming support the Go Fund Me page has received is a testament to how many people’s lives Charlotte touched. Our thoughts are with James and all Charlotte’s loved ones at this deeply sad time.
“One in two of us will get cancer in our lifetime and every step we make towards beating cancer relies on vital donations. We’ve come so far but still have further to go and this donation will enable us to continue making pioneering discoveries in the future to accelerate progress and improve cancer survival to 3 in 4 by 2034.”
Visit Go Fund Me page to make a donation in memory of Charlotte or go to https://www.cancerresearchuk.org/get-involved for more information on offering regular support.
