Worship with me at the Church of Georgie. Pt 2 - Menopause looms. *Binned*

[Holden Mcgroyne]

Has been diagnosed with a brain tumour, fortunately benign. He's going to have an operation after the World Cup and be off for a couple of months.

[JW90]

Get well soon, Cas.

[Salem]

Fuckin' hell

Get well soon Cas , one of talkShite's better presenters

[The Ghost of Alex Higgins]

All the best big man

[Holden Mcgroyne]

C and P from the Times


TONY CASCARINO

Tony Cascarino: I’m lucky: my tumour is benign. Don’t be like me and ignore signs

I woke up one morning about 18 months ago and was conscious of a hissing noise; shhhhhh, inside my left ear, like the distant sound of waves in a seashell. I was suddenly aware that I’d been aware of it for a while and never quite recognised it. It was tinnitus, I knew that, but I also knew it didn’t hurt, so I did what blokes like me tend to do, the thing our dads and grandads did. I ignored it.

Other things were locked away too. I could taste nothing apart from metal in the left side of my mouth, maybe something to do with my fillings, I thought. So I chewed on the right and that was better. Then there were the headaches. There was one over Christmas, which I put down to wine, but it started bad and stayed bad. I was taking too much paracetamol, too much ibuprofen. I had a tingling on my tongue, my left cheek.


When I put the words down, there was obviously a pattern, but not when you block it out, when you have the feeling something isn’t quite right, but you can’t or refuse to put your finger on it. Jo, my partner, kept telling me I was going deaf; I’d answer questions she hadn’t asked, have a go at her for things she didn’t say. It was very frustrating, for both of us, but she has suffered most.

I’m being brutally honest here. I had mood swings. I’d feel down. If I was around a group of people talking, I’d find it hard to hear. Occasionally I’d find myself searching for the right word, which isn’t great for a radio presenter. My balance was affected as well. Putting one foot in front of the other, I felt a bit unstable, enough to be unsure of myself. Not too long ago, I fell down the stairs.

Jo repeatedly told me to get checked out, but she could hardly force me, could she? She told me about Debbie, her sister, who had endured some of the same symptoms and, it turned out, had a brain tumour, but I put it on hold. And then at the turn of 2018, a year after first noticing the shhhhhh in my ear, I went to the doctor and just blurted it out; the deafness, the tinnitus, the headaches, this taste in my mouth, the tingling. I was sent for an MRI scan and waited for the results. From the start, I was told it was probably an acoustic neuroma, the same as Debbie, a benign tumour that can be very small and grow very slowly. You can have them for years without knowing it. Mine is about the size of a golf ball, which is alarming when you think about it, but the benign bit was a huge weight off my shoulders and in that respect, I’m very lucky.


Why am I writing about this? Logistics, firstly. After the World Cup, I’ll be having surgery and my rehabilitation could last for a couple of months, so I’ll be disappearing for a while. The second reason is far more important. My roles with The Times and talkSPORT give me a platform to say please, don’t be like me. In similar circumstances, get yourself checked. I understand now that I left it too long and the longer you leave anything, the bigger the risk.


I’ve never been very good at worrying. I can fixate on trivialities, but if you tell me something really big — and it doesn’t get much bigger than major skull surgery, a 12-hour operation that only two people in the country can perform, apparently — then I’ll say ‘Well, I can’t do anything about that, can I?” The thing about this is that I could have done something, even if I’ll never know how much difference it would have made.

The scariest part was sitting in a little office with the consultant as he ran through a bleak list of things that can go wrong. They have to do that, I guess. I’m going to completely lose the hearing on my left side, but there’s a possibility my speech will be slurred too. Not great for the radio. The side of my face could be affected. There’s a 1 per cent chance I won’t get through the surgery. It sounds tiny, but it isn’t really.

It’s far more likely that I’ll make a full recovery, more or less, just like Debbie, which makes me very fortunate, but I do want an audience, because things like this can damage your life, damage those around you. As the operation gets closer, I’m feeling positive, but what makes me emotional is how much people care, those telephone calls, ‘how are you?’, that pressing of buttons. I’m a professional communicator who has made a pretty basic discovery: it is important to talk.

[Carlos J]

Fuckin' hell

Get well soon Cas , one of talkShite's better presenters

Indeed. All the best, Cas.

[Kowalski]

Great pundit and top man, all the best Tony.

[rob90]

All the best Cas

[Zippy]

Best wishes to Cas. A top fella.

[TransitTrevor]

A man in his position has the ability to reach people via his outlets and you must commend him for doing that.
The description of the symptoms he has shown may well encourage men or women feeling the same to get checked even though they may well feel the same as Cas.

I truly hope his recovery is done in due course and he gets the rest he needs.

As said above, one of the better presenters on TS.

Knows his onions.

All the best

[kevin04]

A good guy, and hope all goes OK.

[JimmyDee]

In the course of a tweet to Big Bob about today's show I took it upon myself to pass on to Tony the best wishes of all on this here forum. He probably said "oh, that bunch of miserable cunts!"

[Sinbad]

Good luck Tone

[Roddy]

Sad news.
Get well soon big man.

[Bad Blue 2000]

More shifts for Rushden.