Terminally ill West Sussex father wrote 30 years’ worth of birthday cards to twin daughters: Lindfield man wanted to be with his children in spirit

Nick Keenan was just 34 when he passed away in November 2020, nine months after finding out that his brain tumour had developed into a glioblastoma.

But his wife Victoria, 35, said Nick wanted to be with their children in spirit as they celebrated their birthdays without him.

She said: “He was consoling others as he was dying and he wrote our girls, Rose and Sophia, birthday cards for the first 30 years of their lives.”

Their daughters were only 17 months old when Nick died and Victoria described him as ‘everyone’s rock, and very much mine’.

Brain Tumour Research, who shared Nick and Victoria’s story, said Nick was diagnosed with a tennis ball-size astrocytoma in 2015 after weeks of experiencing shooting pins and needles in his right arm. They said he underwent two debulking surgeries, radiotherapy, infusion and oral chemotherapy, prescription cannabinoids and natural remedies.

Victoria, who owns Stanton Miller Recruitment, said that in 2015 Nick had returned from a business trip early and gone to hospital.

She said: “When I walked in the room and saw Nick had been crying, I knew that something was wrong. They sat me down and told me they’d found a lesion the size of a tennis ball on the left side of his brain, in the middle of his frontal lobe. They said it was slow-growing and had probably been there since he was born.”

But Nick’s surgery and other treatments went well so he and Victoria decided start a family.

Victoria said: “We just carried on with life as normal and thought we were winning, which is when we decided to go ahead with IVF. Then, in December 2019, when our girls were just six months old, Nick noticed his speech had become slurred. We contacted the doctor and ended up going back in after Christmas. I’d had a really weird gut feeling that it was going to be our last Christmas and so organised the biggest celebration by inviting everybody to come and stay with us.”

In March 2020 they found out the tumour had developed into a glioblastoma and were told Nick probably had less than a year to live. Nick communicated non-verbally with Victoria for six months after losing the ability to speak.

Victoria had bought Nick a miniature dachshund puppy following his diagnosis but it died six months after Nick did, also to a brain tumour.

Victoria is now campaigning with Brain Tumour Research to help its petition to increase research funding reach 100,000 signatures to prompt a parliamentary debate. The charity wants the Government to ring-fence £110 million of current and new funding to kick-start an increase in the national investment in brain tumour research to £35 million a year by 2028.

Victoria said: “Brain tumours are the biggest cancer killer of children and young people under the age of 40, yet they have received just 1 per cent of the national spend on cancer research since records began in 2002.”

She added: “We’ve had a memorial bench installed on Lindfield Common in Nick’s memory. The quote on the bench, which came from Nick, states ‘Each day is a gift, don’t waste it’.”

Visit www.braintumourresearch.org/petition.