22-year-old Qld man “in chronic pain all the time,” with desperate need for brainstem surgery
The sibling-quad just want “the Connor (they) had when (they) grew up,” after a tumour diagnosis has left the 22-year-old a different person, only getting worse as time goes on.
QLD News
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THE duo are known as “typical twins,” but being glued at the hip seems a distant memory now.
After Mitchell Cockerton’s twin brother Connor Cockerton, 22, was diagnosed with a tumour inside his spinal cord at the bottom of his brainstem in 2018, being forced to give up his carpentry apprenticeship in Brisbane - his passion.
Cousin Boston Freestone, 23, said growing up with them was watching a “classic example” of the twin relationship stereotype.
“Growing up, the majority of things that they did, they did together,” Mr Freestone said.
“They had friends very similar friends, they played sports together ... You could just really say that it was a classic example of a twin relationship, one would do something and the other one would do the same thing.”
Continually suffering chronic headaches, balance-lack and tingling sensations in his limbs, the pain isn’t just felt by Connor, with his twin brother Mitchell Cockerton, 22, hurting hard.
“(Connor’s) in chronic pain all the time and it never really goes away,” Mr Cockerton told The Sunday-Mail.
“He can’t do his apprenticeship anymore, he only had a few months left, he would’ve been a qualified chippy,
“We planned on doing our apprenticeship together ... doing everything together, It’s so hard ... It’s so tough seeing him in pain.”
With his other siblings - Sian Cockerton, 25, Jake Cockerton, 24 and Josh Cockerton, 20 - feeling “helpless”.
“You feel a bit hopeless and helpless because there’s only so much you can do,” Sian Cockerton said.
“It’s really affecting his mental health, too ... living in constant pain when the headaches are just overwhelming,
“He’s very passionate and driven and he wants to do all these things and he has all these ambitions.”
And to top it all off, Connor’s latest medical scans from June this year, show the tumour has grown.
After multiple neurosurgeons refusing to perform the one surgery which may save Connor’s life, “too risky” to do, the family have found hope.
But, there’s a catch.
Finally finding a doctor who will do the surgery, saying there’s a “90 per cent” success rate, will set the family back about $120,000, money they don’t have.
And the longer they wait, the worse things will become.
“We’ve been told it’s a 90 per cent success rate, but the doctor explained that you don‘t want to wait for things like this to happen because (Connor) could become paralysed ... You want to get onto it and remove (the tumour) when you’re healthy,” Ms Cockerton said.
On August 16, 2020, Ms Cockerton created a GoFundMe page, knowing she will do anything to “get (her) brother back”.
So far, fundraising about half of the money needed to get Connor the urgent surgery, they haven’t finished yet.
“This surgery means I’ll get my brother back, I can do things with him again,” Ms Cockerton said.
“I wouldn‘t feel like every second of every day he’s in agony ... he could just be happy again.”
“(The surgery) is what he needs to have a life again and it’s a lot of money but it'd be money well spent,” his twin brother Mitchell added.
“It means Connor would go back to normal, he would be the Connor we had when we grew up.”