“Brilliant Craig, everything’s going really well.” That was what Craig Dunn heard at his check-up in September. In January, the same words again. So when the 35-year-old from South Shields went in for a routine scan this May, he expected more of the same.
He got the opposite. The brain tumour had come back and the cancer had reached his spine. Doctors told him he may have as little as months, and at most about a year.
A year that seemed to be improving
Doctors found a medulloblastoma in May 2025, an uncommon and fast-growing brain tumour, after roughly two weeks of severe headaches. Major surgery followed, then radiotherapy and chemotherapy, and he was placed in remission. Life felt as though it was settling. He was the first-time father of three-year-old Serena, and he and his fiancée Nabela were planning a “dream wedding” for December at The Croft in Darlington.
That booking is gone. “Mentally, it’s probably the worst news anybody could ever receive,” he told Chronicle Live. “It’s just hard to overcome it and I’m trying my best for my daughter.”
What shook him most was how little warning there was. The first time, headaches told him something was wrong. This time there was nothing. “I had zero symptoms,” he said. “I was finally getting my life back on track and I felt really good.”
A second operation and a harder verdict
A second operation has since been done, and he has had some symptoms from it. Checks on the new tumour rated it very aggressive, given how fast it came back. “They’ve now said I basically have months to a year left to live.”
Dunn, originally from Sunderland, has moved the wedding forward. On 10 July, he and Nabela will marry in a ceremony at the local registry office.
Most of his thinking is about Serena. “I think what hurts me the most is the fact that she’s going to grow up and she’s not going to remember me,” he said. He wants to leave her a “dear dad’s” diary, a video for each birthday, and birthday cards, and he plans to bring her into the recordings so that she can see herself in them when she is five, six, seven or eight.
An appeal for treatment options
A GoFundMe page has been set up to help the family make memories and to support them financially. Dunn says he was unable to get life insurance after a sepsis diagnosis in 2018 that needed life-saving surgery. Within three days it had brought in over £56,000, according to Chronicle Live. The Mirror later reported more than £68,000.
They are also appealing for advice from anyone who knows about treating adult medulloblastoma, whether in Britain or overseas. The cancer is far more common in young children and is extremely uncommon in grown men and women, so there is little research and few treatment options. Dunn wants to stay alive for his daughter.
Sources
- Tyneside dad heartbroken he will miss daughter grow up (Chronicle Live)
- Dad heartbroken he'll miss daughter grow up after being given just months to live (The Mirror)
