Former Wolverhampton cricket captain fighting to find cure for rare tumour
A Wolverhampton sportsman left paralysed by a rare tumour is hoping to raise £30,000 to fund ground-breaking medical procedures to find a cure.
Former Wolverhampton Cricket Club captain Adam Cuthbert has not been able to walk since December after complications during his third round of spinal surgery.
Friends and family of the 31-year-old are now rallying around to fund new medical procedures as existing treatment has not been successful in defeating the tumour.
They have already raised £18,000 and smashed their original £15,000 target in five days.
Mr Cuthbert, from Tettenhall, said: “My world has been turned upside down. It’s hard to walk into hospital and come out in a wheelchair. Life had been going great. I just want that life back again.”
He was first diagnosed with a tumour in his spinal cord after waking up with a pain in his side and weakness in his legs, in February last year.
A chunk of the tumour was removed the following month and Mr Cuthbert asked his childhood sweetheart Katie-Jo, a 30-year-old PR executive, to marry him, believing the trouble was behind them. Seven months later the tumour returned and he underwent surgery for the second time.
Just three weeks later he was rushed back to hospital for emergency surgery to drain what doctors thought was a cyst on the tumour.
This relatively simple procedure went wrong and complications meant Adam woke up with his right leg completely paralysed. He then spent two months in hospital having aggressive radiotherapy and chemotherapy. During this treatment Adam lost all mobility from the waist down.
Doctors have told him the latest scan showed that the radiotherapy and chemotherapy has only slowed the tumour. Now the couple are desperately searching for a doctor who can help them find a treatment to control it.
The money being raised is helping to pay for hyperbaric oxygen therapy, neurological activity-based rehabilitation, physiotherapy and private clinic consultations.
Mr Cuthbert, who works at Speakers Corner, an international speakers’ booking bureau in London, said: “You don’t realise how perfect everything is until life just flips. After the first couple of surgeries it was all about rehab and trying to walk again, now it’s about trying to beat the tumour.”
The childhood sweethearts, who met at Wolverhampton Grammar School, postponed their August wedding near Stafford. But now they are tying the knot in a register office in London where they now live. Go to justgiving.com/crowdfunding/Adam-Cuthbert
