Here are two things about me: I recently directed and co-wrote a film starring Elizabeth Olsen, Miles Teller, and Callum Turner. It’s called “Eternity” and it’s set in the afterlife. I also recently had an apple-sized tumor removed from my head.

Back in July, my partner, Stephen, and I were about to go on a long-overdue holiday before the premiere of my film in Toronto that September. From script to screen, Eternity had consumed four years of our life, so we needed to celebrate it. In the weeks leading up to this, however, I had been beset by migraines. I suffered with severe vomit-inducing headaches for years, which doctors always dismissed as stress. But this new migraine was accompanied by terrible double vision. So the day before our flight, my partner took me to the eye emergency clinic in Whipps Cross Hospital.

Within an hour of arriving I could tell it was serious. As I was rushed from exam to exam, this weird sense of doom came over me. I began to cry before I even got a result. I told Stephen that he could have everything I owned, that I wanted him to be looked after. He gently took my hand and, to his credit, did not remind me that he makes more money than I do and being lumbered with my negative equity wasn’t that appealing. By the end of the day, 11:39 p.m. to be exact, a doctor brought us into a private room. She adopted the softest speaking voice I had ever heard and showed me a CT scan. 

I could see a large white area. I asked if this very large mass was my brain. She said that it was a tumor. They did not know if it was operable or malignant. It was both surreal and devastating. The validation of knowing my years of debilitating pain were, in fact, rather serious was a hollow victory. The impending idea of death was hard to take in—so my anxiety decided to take over.

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I told Stephen to see if he could refund our flights. He said that wasn’t important right now. I worried about being buried in the UK and not at home in Ireland, where the funeral turnout would invariably be better. My thoughts then went to my film. After four years, I might not get to see Eternity being released. This time he did not say that was unimportant. He knew how important it was to me.

I spent the following weeks in hospital, transferring from Whipps Cross to a neurosurgical ward in The Royal London. Over........

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