I went to the toilet often and had a bad headache. Doctors dismissed me, but these were the signs of brain cancer that changed my life. With astonishing courage, HARRY HOWARD reveals his story

Remember, remember, November 5th. For most of us, this rhyme conjures up visions of fireworks, bonfires and family fun. But it is etched in my memory for a completely different reason.

It was on that day that I was diagnosed with a brain tumor while in a dim ward at Maidstone Hospital in Kent.

It was a bout of vomiting that came without warning and prompted my emergency room visit, but the signs that something was wrong had built up over the months.

I needed to pee more and more often, to the extent that I was going to the toilet twice an hour during the day and three or four times a night.

And I didn’t know it at the time, but the tumor was also the reason that, even though I was 17, I had stopped growing at least two years earlier. Thin and fawn-like, with strangely long legs and large feet but a completely undeveloped upper body, despite this I looked more like a 14-year-old.

It was also the reason I had what I think was the worst headache ever.

Harry Howard recovered in King’s College Hospital in November 2011, shortly after his second brain operation within days

But as I waited to be seen, lying on several chairs in the emergency room waiting room and with my head on my mother’s lap, I had no idea how my life was about to change.

Not just the brain surgery, radiotherapy and chemotherapy I would undergo, but that the impact of my cancer and its treatment would be lifelong.

My treatment saved my life, but its effects and those of the tumor itself left me trading one condition for another – a condition I still live with thirteen years later.

And cancer leads to changes that go beyond the physical. It’s a life-changing trauma – and one I shared with my mother.

As she waited with me in the emergency room, I had no idea she had booked her own medical appointment. A few weeks later, on the same day I started chemotherapy, Mom was diagnosed with breast cancer. It was an astonishing, cruel coincidence that shocked even the doctors. But it also allowed us to support each other.

Knowing that Mom was also sick helped put my situation into perspective and kept any thoughts of self-pity at bay. My mood could have easily changed, as the cancer struck just as my peers were about to leave school.

Harry’s mother, who was simultaneously undergoing her own treatment for breast cancer. She is now also cancer free

It was after I started my final year of A-levels in 2011 that I began to experience increasingly severe fatigue and lethargy in addition to my urinary symptoms.

My schoolwork became ten times harder. Seeing friends after school or on weekends became more and more of a challenge.

Then came the crushingly painful headaches. I had a so-called pineal germinoma. Over the course of my life, a group of sex cells – which normally develop into reproductive cells in the testicles – had grown near my pineal gland, which is located in the middle of the brain and secretes the ‘sleep hormone’ melatonin.

As the tumor grew, it began to impact my pituitary gland – and my development, as the gland produces hormones that control growth – as well as the production of urine by the thyroid and kidneys, which explains why I had to urinate . more.

Initially the doctor was not concerned about it. At one point he asked if I was eating too many bags of chips because the sodium or salt levels in my blood were so high, when this was actually due to severe dehydration from all that urination.

My mother and I used Google and came back to him with the name of a condition usually caused by a brain tumor associated with constant urination: it’s called diabetes insipidus.

Harry walks through the North Downs in Kent, although cruel cancer treatment has left him dependent on lifelong medication to keep his body strong and healthy

He leaned back in his chair and said he had never seen a case in thirty years of practice.

He finally referred me to an endocrinologist about six weeks after my first visit. But before I could make that appointment, I found myself in the emergency room on Bonfire Night.

The doctors there sent me for a CT scan and it turned out that I had a brain tumor.

The giveaway was the nurse with the box of tissues following the doctor to my bedside when they came to break the news.

Both my mother and I were in tears, but I don’t think I could fully absorb the implications of what I was being told at the time.

They had to do an MRI scan to get a clearer picture, so I was taken in an ambulance to King’s College Hospital in London that night. I felt a childish sense of excitement at the honor of receiving a blue light.

Harry Howard on his 18th birthday with his father John, mother Helen and brother Tom

At King’s I had two brain surgeries within a few days. One of these was to relieve the pressure in my skull caused by the tumor blocking the normal flow of cerebrospinal fluid (CSF). As a result, the fluid had nowhere to go and the resulting pressure, known as hydrocephalus, was the cause of my extreme headaches.

The second procedure was a biopsy, where a sample of the tumor was taken to determine what type it was.

A fortnight later I started my treatment at the Royal Marsden in London.

Luckily it was less than an hour from home in Kent, and from where my father lived (he and my mother had separated when I was very young) in London.

As the countdown to my radiotherapy began, I started having blurred vision as the tumor started pressing on my optic nerve. That’s why I needed chemotherapy to quickly reduce it and thus avoid the risk of permanently reduced vision.

The same day I started chemotherapy, Mom was diagnosed with breast cancer.

Harry on the day he graduated from his MA in journalism at the University of Kent

When my shocked father told my brother and me the news a few weeks later, I remember burying my face in my brother’s shoulder and bursting into tears.

My brother, who faced the prospect of losing both my mother and me, never complained that his early twenties (his twentieth birthday came nine days after my diagnosis) were dominated by our illnesses and our recovery.

My treatment ended at the end of February 2012 and my mother was declared cancer-free just a few weeks before.

But it wasn’t a final curtain for either of us – that’s not how cancer treatment is.

My pituitary gland—located at the base of the brain—was supposed to release hormones to stimulate growth, my thyroid function, my kidneys’ urine production, and much more. But the radiotherapy dealt it the death blow and so I live with a lifelong condition called panhypopituitarism, which means the hormones are not released so I have to take different types of medications every day to replicate its effects.

They include hydrocortisone, which replaces cortisol, our “stress hormone” that plays a role in everything from the sleep-wake cycle and metabolism to blood sugar levels and immune function. Without this you cannot survive.

I also have to take desmopressin, an antidiuretic medication that keeps me from having to urinate all the time. It means I have to pay attention to how much fluid I drink.

So a pint of beer does not lead to a quick trip to the pub bathroom. On the contrary, the fluid stays in my system much longer, so if I drink too much I can get dangerously low sodium levels in the blood (hyponatremia) because the sodium is effectively diluted.

Symptoms include severe headaches, nausea, confusion – and in severe cases, seizures and even coma.

There have been other consequences too.

I always found it difficult to explain to new friends what had happened to me, mainly because I felt uncomfortable about how shocked they always were. My cancer also meant that I didn’t look like a ‘real man’ until I was 20, after a few years of taking growth hormone. So with that came an inevitable slowdown in my love life, as my self-confidence increased.

Fortunately, my history doesn’t seem to have deterred romantic partners, except for one.

A few years ago, I agreed to have dinner with a girl after we started talking on a dating app. I ended up casually telling her that I had had cancer as a teenager, even though I normally wouldn’t reveal it so early.

A few days later she canceled the meal because she was afraid it would come back or that I might pass it on to any children we might have. If there was ever a case of putting the cart before the horse, that was it.

I am now a healthy 30-year-old and have had a career as a journalist at MailOnline for six years. Still, when I develop a condition that doesn’t have an immediately obvious cause, I tend to think: Has the cancer come back? Is my number finally active?

But while it may sound strange, I wouldn’t go back and change what happened because I feel like the experience made me a stronger and more mature person.

Although for those who believe that the impact of cancer ends when everything is clear, that things just go back to the way they were, millions of survivors will tell you otherwise.

I am no longer the person I was 13 years ago. I experienced something that completely changed my outlook on life for the better. But there was a price, and I will pay it forever.