A 21-year-old man died from cancer in Scotland just a week after being diagnosed. He had been experiencing back pain for weeks, but believed the discomfort was caused by sleeping on a bad mattress.
“We are heartbroken, we never imagined that he would pass away so tragically and suddenly”, lamented the young man’s cousin, Ailley Colquhoun, on the campaign page that the family organized to raise funds to pay for the young man’s funeral.
Gerald died this Tuesday (30/1), just a week after taking the first biopsies on a cancer discovered by chance and which was already metastatic, affecting his blood, bones and kidneys.
The tests that would pinpoint the origin of the disease, discovered during preparatory exams for surgery, were not even ready before the young man’s death.
Gerald had been minimizing his back pain for weeks, and only started to worry when he started vomiting frequently. He was taken to hospital by his parents when he coughed up blood.
The boy underwent emergency surgery on 1/19 to drain his kidneys and try to contain his severe anemia, but the doctors’ attempts were unsuccessful: Gerald was revived during the procedure, but remained in a coma until his death.
“Gerald was a beautiful, funny, polite boy who loved his dogs. He had his whole life ahead of him, it’s heartbreaking to face this situation”, declared the cousin.