Coming together for #GoGreyInMay

A review of Brain Tumour Awareness Month 2023

A huge thank you to everyone who participated in #GoGreyInMay for this year’s Brain Tumour Awareness Month. May is the one month every year that our community comes together and spreads awareness about brain tumours. Without this awareness, there is little chance that we will get the much needed improvements in treatment and care for people with brain tumours in Aotearoa New Zealand.

The month started off with the launch of our 2023 Brainy Beanies exhibition at The Meteor Theatre in Hamilton. Over 650 handcrafted beanies were on display over the five day exhibition and are now being sold at selected craft markets and on the Brain Tumour Support NZ website. All proceeds from Brainy Beanies go towards funding our signature Brain Box programme which in early May achieved a significant milestone when we despatched our 500th Box to a young person in Tauranga. It is hard to believe that since mid 2020, our Brain Boxes have provided comfort and support to over 500 newly diagnosed brain tumour patients and carers around the country.

We are hugely grateful to everyone who took the opportunity to fundraise for us over Brain Tumour Awareness Month. Some wonderful fundraisers were held, including a ‘High tea for family and friends’ by Simon Wilson, a ‘Beanies for Brain Tumours Day’ by Julie Dixon and her team at Oranga Tamariki Taranaki, and a ‘Christchurch challenge’ by Sarah Cragg.

Sarah was also one of the subjects of our #GoGreyInMay Patient Stories awareness-raising project. She was joined by Louis Laws and Sandi Van Barnefeld in having their stories published on our website for Brain Tumour Awareness Month. Also sharing their stories in creative ways were Renee Prescott, who documented her brain tumour journey in a powerful photo essay and Bonnie Etherington, who wrote an insightful account of her brain tumour diagnosis in a beautifully written essay “A fried egg in space”.

It was great to have our medical community get on board Brain Tumour Awareness Month also. In the second week of May, Brain Tumour Support NZ presented a panel discussion at the 2023 Neuroscience Nurses Virtual Symposium run by BTSNZ medical advisory board member, Caroline Woon. Our panel of patients and caregivers talked about their lived experience of brain tumours journeys to an audience of nurses from around the country.

In the last week of May, Waikato neurologist Dr Matthew Phillips presented our Brain Tumour Awareness Month webinar: “Metabolic Therapies in Glioblastoma”. This webinar discussed the use of fasting and the ketogenic in conjunction with standard treatments for glioblastoma, the most common type of brain cancer in adults. Over 130 people registered to view the webinar which made it our most watched webinar ever. A recording of the webinar can be viewed here.

It is both heartening and humbling to witness our community come together over the month of May to share each others’ stories and spread awareness about brain tumours to the wider New Zealand public. While we highlight these efforts in May, our mission to improve the lives of people affected by brain tumours continues 24/7, 365 days of the year.