Two red flags fit and healthy dad noticed before stage four brain cancer diagnosis
When Met Police sergeant Matt Efford almost committed a crime, he suspected there might be something not quite right in his brain.
Five days later, he collapsed in a shopping centre in the build-up to Christmas and was rushed to hospital, where doctors later discovered a grade four brain tumour living inside his head.
After it became clear that chemotherapy and surgery wouldn't be enough to entirely remove the tumour, the 36-year-old father has had to make peace with his own mortality, but hasn't given up on spending as much time as possible with his wife and two young children.
He is now fundraising for a potentially life-changing immunotherapy treatment in Germany which could prolong his life and ensure that his kids have their 'Dad around for as long as possible to share precious memories with'.
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Matt wasn't your typical cancer patient; he was feeling 'fit and healthy' up until he blacked out in December 2025, but now believes he's identified a couple of clues from that time that suggested something was wrong.
Speaking to LADbible, Matt said: "I have looked back on it to see if there was any real signs that I missed. There were two that stuck out where alarm bells should have been ringing.
"One of them was the forgetting of names. So it might be someone that I work not directly with in a close bubble, but I work amongst. I know their face, I know what they look like, I could probably draw a picture of them. But if I saw them face to face, that correspondence of name would just disappear.
"And for a while that would happen, it would maybe be one or two people. It wouldn't be on a grand scale, it wouldn't be anything that I would think maybe I should check with the GP about this.
"I just thought maybe it was just that I would sort of getting of age and someone's name slipping your memory, so I didn't look too much into it, but that was that was certainly one of the signs I look back on and think, 'Oh, you know, maybe that was something telling'."
But it was during a trip to a shopping centre close to home when he almost walked out of a shop without paying for anything, in a momentary blip many would shrug off, that was more likely evidence the tumour was starting to have an impact on his brain.
"And then the main one, which should have been sort of a bit more of the red flag, was five days before my incident happened. I went shopping to the same place that I actually collapsed. I was Christmas shopping, I tried on some items in Superdry, a couple of jumpers that my mum was looking at getting me.
"I'd gone in the changing rooms, tried them on, didn't think anything of it; I was just going to put them back on the rack, and without subconsciously thinking - and being elsewhere mentally - I've walked out with with these two items of clothing still on the hangers, still tagged up.
"I think I probably got about 10 yards out the store till it clicked. I hadn't even been stopped. I'm a police officer, but yeah, I could have walked away without even realising. It was only the point that I realised what I'd done where I had that blind bit of panic. The woman near the front was oblivious as I walked back in to put the items back on the hanger.
"Looking back on it, that was a telling sign that something wasn't right.
"But being physically healthy and having no other symptoms, I put it down to lack of concentration and the stress of the busy Christmas period."
However, things would become more apparent when he blacked out in the same shopping centre a few days later, with Matt still confused about what had happened or how long he had been out for.
An off-duty doctor suggested that it could have been a chronic seizure.
Matt added: "It was a bit of a surreal experience really. To go from never having any medical problems to the other extreme, was a big thing.
"My wife was called while I was unconscious. She and I went to hospital together, there wasn't much concern apart from what the off-duty doctor had said to the paramedics. I went for a CT scan first of all and then a separate MRI scan. It was at that point when the doctor came round and told me that I had a mass on my brain."
Doctors couldn't confirm how serious it was at that point but Matt and his family were obviously left completely speechless, as he realised that his 'life was about to change in every department'.
After being referred to a specialist just after Christmas, Matt learned that the tumour was so big that the only option for him was surgery, which went ahead in February.
Surgery was 'as successful as it could be', with doctors able to remove around 90 percent of the tumour, and once it had been sent off to be studied, Matt learned it was a grade four tumour, the worst case scenario.
The residual cells left after surgery still pose a threat but it was here where the NHS struggles to offer much more hope, with Matt suggesting that his outlook was 'bleak' due to a lack of funding.
The standard care Matt was offered was six weeks of radiotherapy through the NHS and then a low dose of chemotherapy over 12 cycles.
He added: "Although I believe in the standard care protocol, it's not something that is going to cure my brain tumour. It's something to prolong my life for as long as possible and eradicate any cells which might be rapidly growing. But where do we go from here? I need something more. It felt like you were left by the wayside, which for me was a pretty tough thing to take."
Matt identified three potential treatment options in the US, Mexico and Germany but ended up going for the European option and after a video call with the company, things were put into motion, with it hoped that the immunotherapy can work to train Matt's immune system to defend itself and destroy the remaining cancer cells inside his body.
Although 'it's not a cure', it offers Matt hope that he can spend more time with his seven-year-old and five-year-old, after almost a year of turmoil which has turned the family's life upside down.
Matt has managed to raise £130k through his GoFundMe page, and while that's not quite enough to cover everything financially, he has travelled to Germany this week to kickstart his treatment.
You can donate to his page here.
James Moorhouse