A brain tumour has been found in a five-year-old boy for the second time in his life, after it was believed the cancer had been successfully removed.
James Copping, from Kelvedon, was diagnosed with his second mass this year and his family are waiting to for test results which will tell them if it has grown.
Doctors will then decide what to do next – another operation, more waiting, or a different treatment.
Natalie Copping, James’ mum, does not like the word ‘benign’ because people associate that with a good diagnosis. Currently James’ is classed as a grade one tumour, meaning it is slow-growing and not spreading.
She said: “He understands a lot more now, he’s asking questions and doesn’t want to go to hospital because he gets anxious, and we try to be as honest as we can without going into to much detail.”
His first operation was in 2014 at Addenbrooke’s Hospital, when he was only three-years-old, after Natalie and Jonathan, James’ dad, noticed worrying symptoms such as a lack of balance, his head tilting to one side, severe headaches, and mood problems.
Natalie described his screaming from the headaches as something “they had never heard before”, and said she knew “at that point there was something in the brain there shouldn’t have been”.
When Colchester police heard about James’ story, and his love of police cars, they let him come down and have a fun day at the station.
Natalie said: “James is absolutely obsessed with police cars. He’s been through such a lot we wanted to do something to cheer him up and I can’t thank Pc Robert Edgar and his colleagues enough for inviting him along.”
James got to sit in a police car, was given his own police hat and tape, met the chief inspector and was asked to track down a suspect who had smashed a car window.
Pc Edgar said: “We set up a crime scene in the back yard so James had the chance to find a suspect, make his first arrest and take him to custody to have his fingerprints taken.”
James has three siblings aged 14, 12 and eight.
“It was hard at first on the other children, but we didn’t tell them too much because obviously at the time we didn’t know too much, we only knew he had a tumour”, Natalie added.
“We were waiting to get surgery so we just said he had a poorly head and the doctors didn’t know why.
“I didn’t want to lie but we wanted to protect them.
“The children have been amazing, it’s never affected their schoolwork. Obviously they were sad but they wanted to just get on with it.”
The family are keen to raise awareness of the symptoms, which include fitting or fainting, confusion, loss of balance, numbness or weakness on one side of the body and personality changes.
People can also experience impaired memory, changes to senses and problems with speech, writing or drawing.
The Copping family are doing a 10km walk in October in aid of The Brain Tumour Charity, for which they have already managed to raise more than £800.
To help and donate visit their JustGiving page.
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