Airdrie mum raises £10k after losing son to tragic brain tumour

Nadia Majid was left heartbroken when her little boy, Rayhan, passed away just four months after being diagnosed with the mass in his head.

She was determined to pay tribute and raise awareness by taking on the 10,000 steps a day challenge last month with her family.

Now she has been left blown away by the generous donations which allowed her to raise more than £10,200 for Brain Tumour Research.

Nadia Majid set up Remembering Rayhan (Image: Brain Tumour Reasearch)

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Nadia, who set up fundraising group Remembering Rayhan, said: “I want to say a huge, big thank you to everybody who donated or shared what we were doing.

“We received 362 donations and really raised awareness for Remembering Rayhan and the brain tumour cause.

“I am really humbled every time anyone does something in Rayhan’s name, even now five years after we lost him.

“My aunt passed away on January 31 which meant we didn’t start our 10,000 steps challenge with the big group walk we had planned, but we managed it instead on February 25 in Maxwell Park, Pollokshields, a place Rayhan always enjoyed going.

“I loved doing the challenge and never found it mundane.

“And I had lots of little signs from Rayhan in the form of rainbows, robins and white feathers.

“It was lovely to have a purpose and a target, as well as the camaraderie of walking with family and neighbours. In fact, it was so good we are going to do it all again next year!”

Nadia Majid took Rayhan to hospital after GPs couldn't find out what was wrong (Image: Rayhan and his parents in hospital)

We previously reported how Rayhan started having bad headaches and being sick in October 2017.

Nadia took him to see four different GPs on six separate occasions, but no-one thought anything was seriously wrong.

When Rayhan’s headaches and sickness became continuous, in desperation, Nadia and husband Sarfraz took him to A&E at the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital in Glasgow where an MRI scan revealed a 3cm x 4cm mass in Rayhan’s brain.

Nadia Majid and her family are doing steps for Rayhan (Image: Sourced)

Rayhan underwent surgery to remove as much of the tumour as possible, which turned out to be an aggressive grade three medulloblastoma which was touching his brainstem.

His parents were told he would need six weeks of radiotherapy and four months of chemotherapy, but before the treatment even started, another MRI scan revealed the devastating news that the cancer has spread.

Rayhan's memory lives on (Image: Sourced)

Despite completing the radiotherapy and his first round of chemotherapy, Rayhan died on April 7, 2018 in the arms of his loving parents.

Brain tumours kill more children and adults under the age of 40 than any other cancer, yet historically just 1% of the national spend on cancer research has been allocated to this devastating disease.

Matthew Price, community development manager at Brain Tumour Research, said: “We’re really grateful to Nadia and the Remembering Rayhan team for taking on our challenge and for raising such an incredible amount.

“It’s only with the support of people like them that we’re able to progress our research into brain tumours and improve the outcome for patients who are forced to fight this awful disease.”