‘I opened the window so her soul could leave’, mum’s heartbreaking diary of daughter’s brain cancer battle & bucket list
WHEN Laura Nuttall took her final breath in May last year, aged 23, mum Nicola opened a window to “let her soul fly away”.
It was a beautiful gesture in tribute to a young woman whose fight against brain cancer since she was 19 was so inspiring it coaxed comic Peter Kay back on stage in 2021 after a four-year break.
Laura, from near Nelson, Lancs, made headlines as she ticked off a bucket list of wishes including driving a monster truck, commanding a Navy warship, riding pillion on a motor racing bike and meeting the Red Arrows.
Peter, who knew Laura’s dad Mark, a storyboard artist, through his work at Granada TV, made a triumphant return to hold two charity shows for Laura’s treatment.
Laura’s mum Nicola, 54, had been keeping thousands of X/Twitter followers updated about her daughter’s journey.
The campaigner for more funding for brain tumour research has now written a moving book about Laura’s life, The Stars Will Still Be There.
Here, Grace Macaskill highlights exclusive extracts from the book, which tells how Nicola, husband Mark, 61, and Laura’s sister Gracie, 22, all coped.
- The Stars Will Still Be There, by Nicola Nuttall, is out on Thursday (£20, HarperCollins).
October 2018
MY daughter Laura was in her first term at King’s College London studying international relations when I got the call.
She had been to an opticians for an eye test to complete her application to become an officer cadet with the University Royal Navy Unit and was being sent to Moorfields Eye Hospital for tests.
Days later a nurse would deliver devastating news.
Laura had a brain tumour.
Our world was never going to be the same again. As the doctor left the room, there was a moment’s silence.
“Plot twist,” said Laura dryly, in the understatement of the year.
Laura called the admin department at King’s to say she was leaving with immediate effect, explaining: “I’ve got a brain tumour.”
It was around then that the angel of death started to visit me.
Sometimes she would just whisper in my ear, other times she’d take centre stage in feverish dreams or sidle into my peripheral vision when I was awake.
She looked like Siobhan Fahey from Shakespears Sister in the Stay video.
I knew exactly what she was: the embodiment of my darkest fears.
November 2018
LAURA’S surgeon made us aware of the risks involved in the complex brain surgery she needed.
On the morning of her operation, with half an hour to go, Laura still wasn’t out of bed.
Gracie and Mark went to get her up but couldn’t rouse her. Something was terribly wrong.
Laura was rushed to Salford Royal where the surgeon came into her room dressed in green theatre scrubs and cap. Her life was in the balance.
After the surgery Laura’s room crackled with the static of pulsing monitors and soft lights.
Her very existence had been reduced to this series of neon digits on a monitor.
Later, at the Christie Hospital in Manchester, the oncologist explained that Laura would have 30 sessions of radiotherapy.
We were desperate to help Laura and, despite the oncologist’s reticence, took a leap of faith. We introduced cannabis.
A friend of a friend, doing well with a similar diagnosis, offered to put us in touch with his source.
We were sent a mobile number, and a secret codeword “grease”.
Details were exchanged and a few days later we found ourselves driving around a housing estate looking for our “man”.
The man turned out to be one half of a middle-aged couple in a tidy bungalow with a neat garden.
His wife made us cups of milky tea and told a story of breast cancer that had refused to respond to chemo.
In time cannabis would become a fundamental element of Laura’s treatment protocol, and part of her daily life.
Even without the anti-tumour effects shown by promising new research, cannabis lifted her mood and, perhaps more importantly, improved her tiny appetite.
February 2019
LAURA started a bucket list — and it was very random.
She wanted to watch the filming of Saturday Night Live and meet US comedian Kate McKinnon, visit the Heinz beans factory in Wigan, drive a heavy goods vehicle, see The Scream by Edvard Munch, visit the Churchill War Rooms, go gold-panning, cross the Equator, have afternoon tea at the Ritz, catch a big fish and have a photo taken holding it (ideally with Bob Mortimer and Paul Whitehouse).
I was going to need a great deal of help to make Laura’s wishes come true, so later that day I posted the bucket list on Twitter.
I also became a relentless sender of the brazen email and cringed at how cheeky my requests were.
I’m proud most of Laura’s dreams came true — and more.
She piloted a Royal Navy warship, spent a day with MI5, met Michelle Obama and even got to watch Saturday Night Live being filmed.
We were also raising £150,000 to fund something called a dendritic vaccine for Laura, which helps the immune system attack cancer cells.
March 2019
WE received a phone call that the pessimist in me had been half-expecting, and which sent us right back to square one.
We had hoped for the dendritic vaccine, made from a frozen tumour, but there wasn’t enough of Laura’s tumour available.
I was back on the laptop trying to fashion a Plan B.
That same month British Airways flew us on a trip to South Africa to cross the Equator.
In the Concorde lounge Laura had a call from Sir Alex Ferguson and they discussed the best things to wear on safari.
I knew the early-morning safari starts would be hard on Laura: “Listen, Laura, we don’t have to get up for the early game drive, we can do the evening ones. I know you need your sleep.”
She replied: “I’ll sleep when I’m home, Mum — I’m going to do absolutely everything.”
June 2019
LAURA accepted a new university place in Manchester to study philosophy, politics and economics.
She was so frail I couldn’t imagine she would be strong enough to look after herself and walk between halls and lectures, but we had to remain positive — she had three months of recovery before term started.
We scheduled a telephone appointment with a professor in Germany whose clinic offered treatments designed to stimulate the immune system into recognising cancer cells so they attack them with T-cells — immunotherapy in its simplest form.
It was the best option we’d found, so we arranged to take Laura over to Cologne the following month. She went every month for a year.
Less than two per cent of the UK national spend on cancer research has been on the brain.
All cancers need a cure but it’s hard not to feel aggrieved by the reluctance to invest in brain cancer treatments.
January 2020
THERE was a spot on the brain in Laura’s scan.
It was 4mm across, but the doctor didn’t think it was visible in the previous scan, which meant it was growing.
It was too small to operate on, so it would most likely be a “watch and wait” scenario.
We assumed our usual positions — Laura pragmatic, Gracie and I devastated, and Mark pretty much in denial.
March-April 2021
LAURA’S cancer was back.
Gracie was inconsolable: “This is going to be our life, isn’t it?
“We are going to have to go through all this, every three months, and if we’re not . . . that means she’s dead.”
Summer 2021
LAURA didn’t want to restart chemo immediately. It was likely to make her sick and her priority was to finish her degree.
It was decided Laura should begin hormone injections to stimulate her ovaries, and any useful eggs could be stored until needed.
This was a notice of intent — a promise to her future self she would still be there and had given herself the best chance of being a mum.
In July Mark’s friend, the comedian Peter Kay, came over for lunch and cheered us up.
They had worked together briefly at Granada TV 15 years ago.
When Laura’s story first made the local news, Peter had given Mark a call and had maintained regular contact ever since.
I later wrote Peter an email asking if he would perform at a fundraising ball.
Minutes later, my phone rang. “I could do you ten minutes at your ball, or ask them at Burnley Mechanics Theatre, but what I could also do is phone up the Manchester Apollo and see what their availability is,” he said. I almost dropped the phone.
Within a week, we had a matinee and an evening show booked at the Apollo, one of the biggest venues in Manchester.
Peter hadn’t toured for years, and I knew that there would be media interest — but once details were released, the world went mad.
December 2021
I STARED at the hospital mural of smiling fish as my eyes swam with tears. The cancer had grown.
We were back at square one for a third time, and barely nine months since Laura’s last surgery.
There was a new, 2cm tumour on Laura’s brain.
Realistically, surgery alone was only going to buy us an extra six to 12 months, so she would need to go back on chemo again.
I cried all the way home, quietly, so Laura in the passenger seat couldn’t hear.
We were meeting Peter Kay later for tea. I don’t think he could have seen many audiences as miserable as us, but he had an incredible knack of getting smiles from the saddest faces.
“You should come to Dance For Life next year, I’ll get you up on stage with me,” he said.
“You can come up through a trapdoor in your wheelchair, Laura.”
Only Peter could make us laugh with a line like that. We all felt a hundred times better.
If you could cure someone with laughter and a bear hug, Peter could heal the world.
We were so grateful for his support — the funds he’d raised would allow us access to further vaccine therapy in Germany, and we knew how lucky it made us.
Spring 2022
WE made it to Peter’s Dance For Life show and Laura had no need of a trapdoor — she danced all night.
The family was out in force, wearing tutus, legwarmers and Brain Tumour Charity T-shirts.
Peter got us all on stage and we joined him in a Love Train conga in front of 10,000 people.
Summer 2022
LAURA’S graduation was on one of the hottest days the UK had ever experienced.
She looked stunning in a dress we had bought during her treatment time in Cologne.
I took a million photographs. I wanted to burn the memory into the backs of my eyes, so I never forgot how beautiful or happy she was.
September 2022
I HAD managed to convince Mark and Gracie we should enter the Great North Run to raise funds for the Brain Tumour Charity, but Laura had other ideas.
“If you lot are doing it, I’m doing it too,” she stated firmly.
During the race, Laura soldiered on but became gradually quieter, her face pale, eyes starey.
Each time we asked if she wanted to stop, she shook her head determinedly.
We met Laura’s doctor and the news wasn’t good — a scan showed new growth.
It was too risky to fly to Germany now because the pressure could be dangerous for Laura.
Laura knew better than any of us that time was short, but would be talking with the airport border police about trying to get a job.
We were now reliant on miracles.
November 2022
LAURA was getting sicker so we planned an early Christmas which developed a momentum all of its own.
We were overwhelmed by the generosity of everyone.
I don’t think I’d appreciated how far and wide Laura’s story had spread.
It was humbling and heart-warming to read all the kind and supportive words.
Fake Christmas Day was brilliant.
December 2022
ONE morning Laura woke up and said, “Mum, this is mad, but last night, when I was asleep I was visited by a spirit and it traced a cold finger down my back.
“It’s happened a few times before but I’m not frightened.”
I was, though. Laura was taken into the Christie where the doctor told us that, once she was stable, we should take her home and they would help manage her pain.
We knew what that meant. Gracie wept: “I don’t want to be an only child.”
January/February 2023
MY friend Steph offered us a few days in her rental house on the Northumberland coast.
One night Laura and I sat on a bench by the sea to stare up at a million stars.
“When we’re dead, the stars will still be there, and the tide will come in and go back out; we’re hardly anything at all, are we?” she said softly.
April 2023
LAURA needed a fifth operation.
Things changed. As the world outside moved to the light days of spring, we were chilled by an approaching winter.
We were losing Laura — she stared with wide eyes but answered questions with a single word, or didn’t answer, or made a small mime.
May 2023
LAURA could just use odd words, then yes or no.
We used a pen and paper, then a child’s pink plastic Magna Doodle, and then it was thumbs up or down, then nothing more than a long blink in place of communication.
We pushed the sofa against her bed and I would play the music she liked, or read from The Magic Faraway Tree while she stroked my arm.
We moved the television so Laura could watch her favourite films from bed.
It was the little things that broke me — the half-drunk bottle of Coke in the fridge that Laura saved one lunchtime with every intention of finishing, the Timberland boots she’d never wear again, the handwritten “To do” list, books bought and never read, the white summer top she’d bought in Dusseldorf — never to be worn.
She began to have seizures.
I’d been told that hearing is the last sense to go, so I played her long, rambling voicemails from her friends.
I hope Laura heard and knew how loved she was.
Then I tried to get messages from people Laura liked to watch — the lovely actress Diane Morgan, then a friend in Ireland sent one from US comedian Tina Fey, followed by an incredible three-minute message from Sandra Bullock which began, “I’ve just spent the past day and a half looking at the extraordinary life that you have lived so far”.
Late at night I walked around the village raging at it all.
My howls of misery echoed back from the walls of sleepy terraced houses.
We all slept downstairs now — on sofas with cushions and spare duvets, like some strange indoor camping adventure.
We drifted in and out of sleep while Mark kept watch and woke us when the time came.
We held her hands and told her how much we loved her, and then she left us. I opened the window so her soul could leave.