Jo

“We have a wonderful almost 5 year old boy, Knox. My husband Tahu is a natural Dad, a saxophone player, a builder and I have two businesses. The year started off pretty normal. We lost a baby last year and started trying again in January. I am diabetic so pregnancies are high risk. I fell pregnant, and when I was 7 weeks Tahu went to the GP for headaches. We didn’t think much of it. Our GP was amazing, she sent him for a CT as a precautionary measure even though he had very few symptoms.

Our world changed in a phone call. Tahu was diagnosed with stage four brain cancer.

Life is now pretty full on to say the least. I have gone from having one little boy and a baby on the way with a nice normal life, to being my husband’s full time carer. I am not a negative person, but I am not that person that sees only the bright side of everything. I am a realist and yet I realise this could have been much worse. Tahu went to the doctor for headaches when many wouldn’t have done. His tumours put him at risk of seizures. He could have been driving, had an accident and killed someone. We could have not had the chance to fight this and enjoy our time together. We want to educate people about brain cancer but also how to deal with a crisis and get them to think about life in a different way. We have set up a Facebook page “Tahu and his Terrible, No Good, Very Bad Tumours”. This helps us to manage the communication to all his whanau and friends as well as connects us to people going through similar challenges.

We have time, we have incredible support and we have hope. It’s a big thing for us and we are able to see how one action or phone call can change everything in life. Tahu is doing lots of things he is passionate about. No more putting off things, we don’t know how long we have so we want to make it count.

Knox will stay out of school until he is six so we can do things together. We want to be able to say “it’s a beautiful day, let’s go to the beach”. We hope Knox and the new baby will have quality time together with Tahu and remember him. Tahu is such an amazing dad and the biggest grief in this for me is if his sons don’t remember him. We hope that others get from this that they need to be following their passions and do things big and small that feed good things into their soul. You don’t have to make every minute count but you should make sure your legacy counts.”

-Jo


Charity registration number: CC57701
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