Tyler Morton died on March 25, 2026. He was 21. His first symptom, in January, had been an earache.
That is the whole span, about four weeks by his family’s account, and it is the reason his sister Ella, a 19-year-old mechanic, is now speaking publicly. Morton was an artist from Bedford. According to Ella, the earache was followed by numbness down one side of his face and trouble walking. At the hospital he was told it was an ear infection and given antibiotics to take home.
The sequence
The antibiotics made no difference. He started vomiting, and the entire left side of his body stopped working. A CT scan, Ella said, “didn’t show anything untoward”. The explanation offered was vertigo, and he was given anti-sickness tablets. “It didn’t help at all,” she said.
She took him back. By the time they arrived he had two seizures, and he could barely speak. Five days later another CT scan showed a lesion on his brain. A week after that came a follow-up scan at Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge, then a biopsy the following day. A week later the family was told the diagnosis: grade 4 glioblastoma.
“Three weeks earlier, he was walking and talking, and now he couldn’t do anything himself,” Ella said. Doctors told the family he was too ill for treatment, since his body would not have coped. He was discharged to die at home.
What the family says
Ella and Tyler lived with their grandmother and, in her words, were inseparable. “I was so angry and upset that we hadn’t found out he had a brain tumour sooner,” she said. “I definitely think a lot more could have been done for him.” Had it been found earlier, she believes, he would probably have had a chance of chemotherapy. “At least that would have felt like we tried.”
These are the family’s recollections. The reports do not carry a response from the hospitals involved.
The wider figures
Glioblastoma is an aggressive brain cancer for which no cure is known. About 3,200 people in the UK receive the diagnosis every year. Only one third survive beyond 12 months, and the average is 12 to 18 months, according to the charity Brain Tumour Research.
The charity says no other cancer kills as many children and adults under 40 as brain tumours do, yet only 1% of national cancer research spending has historically gone to them since records began in 2002. Dr Karen Noble, its director of research and policy, called Tyler’s story “the devastating reality faced by so many families across the UK” and asked the Government to raise investment in research, including into glioblastoma.
Ella is working with the charity during Glioblastoma Awareness Week, which ran July 13 to 19. She finished its 200k in May Your Way challenge and raised more than £1,300.
Sources
- Man, 21, dies four weeks after doctors misdiagnosed him with common ear infection (Manchester Evening News)
- My brother was told he had ear infection – weeks later he was dead (The Mirror)
- Artist with ear infection dies weeks after Addenbrooke's visit (CambridgeLive)
