A young woman lost all of her childhood memories, including moments with her parents and closest friends, after an operation to have a brain tumour removed.

Weronika Fafinska, now 22, first realised something was wrong during a trip to Poland back in 2012 when she could not hear the music sounding through her new headphones.

‘My dad had bought me some headphones for the journey, but I couldn’t hear anything in my right ear’, she recalled. ‘I was practically deaf.’

A GP confirmed that she had gone deaf in her right ear and Weronika , who was just 12 at the time, was transferred to the Royal Hospital for Children and Young People in Edinburgh when she returned home.

An MRI scan there confirmed she had a brain tumour and doctors told her family she may have had it since she was a toddler.

After an operation to remove the malignant mass in February 2014, Weronika woke up with an unexpected memory loss and could not even recognise her parents sitting beside her bed.

Recalling the traumatic experience, she said: ‘In the car going home, I was sick three times because, in my mind, I had never been in a car before. I was so scared because I didn’t know where I was going.

‘When we got to the house, I didn’t recognise it. I didn’t recognise my bedroom, and I didn’t like anything in there, such as my clothes.

‘I didn’t know what anything was. I didn’t know that an oven got hot, or what a football was, but I was able to pick things up, such as my maths timetables, right away.

‘When I returned to school, there were hundreds of people and I didn’t know anyone, not even my closest friends.’

Her tumour remained stable for six years but a scan in March 2021 and a follow-up in August, showed it had grown in size.

With another scan due in April, she is working hard to raise awareness and joined a fundraising challenge run by the Brain Tumour Research charity, where she has been sponsored to walk 10,000 steps every day until tomorrow.

Weronika, who lives in Edinburgh, said: ‘Throughout my life, I haven’t thought about meeting people or getting a boyfriend because I thought there’s no point because I’ll die soon.

‘With a brain tumour, you have three options: surgery, chemotherapy, or radiotherapy, and often they’re not even that successful. If none of these work, you’re basically given a death sentence.

‘I don’t want to die, so if there’s any hope that the money I raise helps to find a treatment, then it’s worth it.’

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