'What makes me angry is Owain could still be alive if we had got him the vaccine'

IS just over a year since Ellie James became a widow after her husband Owain died from the brain tumour he had previously defied the odds to beat.

- RUTH MOSALSKI

Ellie, a mum to beautiful Amelia, who was just 18 months old when her dad was diagnosed, admits that without her daughter she doesn’t think she would be here.

But her daughter - and now a desire to change the law to help others - are keeping her going in the dark days of grief.

Owain, from Caerphilly, was just 34 when, after a protracted period of tests and scans, a tumour was found. In the initial days after a brain scan, the couple clung to hope from the consultant’s words that it was “pea-sized” But just a few days later, a specialist consultant told them Owain had a 14cm tumour, one of the biggest they'd ever seen.

In the months after Owain’s diagnosis they did everything possible, looking for additional and supplementary treatments, undertaking experimental therapies, going abroad, and even getting married with just two weeks to plan it - only for the tumour to return. It is just over a year since he died.

In February 2022 he began having mini-seizures, although they didn’t present as you might expect.

“He just went very weird for like a few seconds and then he'd be fine again, he did that multiple times a day,’ recalled Ellie.

Owain was very fit and healthy and they were back and forth to see his GP. The couple were initially told it might be a heart complaint but those checks proved negative.

Ellie remembers mentioning to the GP that Owain’s grandad had died of a brain tumour.

“1 said, ‘oh, you know, you hear those weird things about young 34-year-olds getting diagnosed with a brain tumour, could it be that?’ and he said, ‘no because he’s not having any headaches”

‘The GP put it down to anxiety, but that didn’t tally with Owain’s personality. “Owain was the least anxious person you could meet, he was so laidback he was almost lying down, and I remember saying to him, ‘you must be anxious about something, tell me what it is”