‘They said there’s nothing more they can do for him'

“His eyes had rolled back and he was foaming at the mouth,” the devastated Sydney mum reveals of the father of her three young children. “I couldn’t comprehend burying my husband.”

Josephine Agostino

4 min read

June 5, 2023 - 11:33AM

Family Life

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Salwa was about to get back into bed at 4am after caring for her unwell daughter when husband, John, suddenly made a noise she’d never heard before.

“It was dark and I heard this massive scream,” the Sydney mum tells Kidspot about the 29- year-old father of her three children.

“I had my phone light on from walking down the corridor and I flashed it onto his face and his eyes had rolled back. He was shaking uncontrollably and foaming at the mouth, smacking his chest with his hand. It was shocking. I had seen epileptic seizures in others but this was like nothing I’d ever seen before. I was petrified.”

While Salwa was on the phone with the ambulance service that morning, on January 19 this year, John’s condition deteriorated within seconds.

“Out of nowhere, he stopped moving and breathing,” the 25-year-old says.

“He was unconscious for a whole minute until he took a deep breathe. I thought I had lost him. When he woke up, he had no memory of what had happened, and didn’t know who or where he was. He kept looking at me like, ‘Who are you?’ It killed me to see that. It was very scary.”

Salwa with her husband John. The family is raising funds to get John to Texas for potentially life-saving treatment on his brain cancer. Picture: Supplied

"We'd only just lost a cousin, so my heart just sank"

Within hours of entering hospital, John’s memory gradually returned, and doctors hastily began preparing his discharge that very same day.

“They said it was pretty common for people to have a one-off seizure and he was probably just exhausted,” Salwa remembers.

A CT scan was done as a precautionary measure on Salwa’s insistence - and it was the results of that which completely changed this young family’s life.

“They said there was a tumour on the left frontal lobe,” she recalls vividly.

“We had only just lost a cousin from a brain tumour recently, so my heart just sank.”

John and Salwa with their kids Natallia, 5, Nazih-Jordan, 2, and Dianna-Rose, 4. Picture: Supplied

"He didn't have one symptom before his seizure"

In February, a biopsy on John’s 6 x 6 centimetre tumour confirmed their worst nightmare.

The once perfectly healthy young father-of-three was diagnosed with mid grade glioma - a form of brain cancer.

“I didn’t know how this was possible since he didn’t have one symptom before his seizure,” his distraught wife says.

For two months, Salwa and John were told the cancer was operable, but that hope was cruelly dashed when a scan showed the tumour had become diffused into brain tissue and no more than five per cent of it could now be removed.

“John was shattered,” Salwa says emotionally.

“He lost it. I’ve never seen him that upset in my life.”

John was rushed to hospital after the scary incident at home, where the family was given terrible news. Picture: Supplied

"There is no good outcome with this ... all we can do is slow it down"

Heartbreakingly, Salwa and John were delivered a horrific prognosis that in all the cases their doctor had seen of this disease, every single patient progressed to stage four “and then death”.

“When he told me that, I just wasn’t ready to give up,” Salwa says, fighting back tears.

“I’d only just buried my cousin from brain cancer in August last year and I couldn’t comprehend now burying my husband.”

Fighting with everything they have, John is now undergoing radiation. The best case scenario is that it slowly stems the progression of the cancer.

With chemotherapy planned after that, all they can hope for with this treatment is buying John just a little more time as, according to doctors, his cancer is terminal.

“They told me, ‘There is no good outcome with this’,” Salwa says. “‘All we can do is slow it down’.”

The young dad has been told he will have 18 months to live when his cancer reachers stage four. Picture: Supplied

"If we have any chance, it's better than no chance at all"

Tragically, if or when John’s cancer reaches stage four, he has been told he will have little more than 12 to 18 months to live.

Not accepting this unthinkable fate, the couple are now hoping for John to be treated in Texas, in the United States, by a doctor whose potentially life-saving treatment is unavailable anywhere else.

They are currently fundraising for the specialised therapy, which will cost in excess of $100,000.

“It gives us so much hope,” she says.

“If we have any chance, it’s better than no chance at all.”

John, meanwhile, is suffering from extremely painful headaches that debilitate him daily.

“He dreads going to sleep because that’s when his headaches come on and they are so horrible,” Salwa explains.

“He has to take pain medication that’s so much stronger than Endone just to cope. I lie in bed paranoid that he’ll have another seizure because I’m still so traumatised by it. I wake up and check on him all through the night.”

John with his son Nazih-Jordan. Picture: Supplied

"He's my best friend. I can't imagine one day without him"

While he was previously the family’s sole provider, John’s only focus is now being present for his wife and beautiful young children - daughters, Natallia, 5, and Dianna-Rose, 4, and son, Nazih-Jordan, 2 - while he can.

“His whole outlook on life has completely changed,” Salwa says.

“He doesn’t look towards the future anymore. He just lives day by day. He doesn’t know what tomorrow brings, so he just does everything he can to make his kids happy.”

“He’s my best friend. I can’t imagine one day without him.”

John’s family has created a GoFundMe campaign to raise funds for his treatment in Texas.