Only a couple of weeks ago, Darian Convery was living a normal, happy, and healthy life in Wagga.
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The 24-year-old police officer was experiencing some slight headaches, but he thought little of them until a precautionary scan showed up a mass of lesions in his brain.
"For the past month Darian was getting mild headaches off and on, I told him to just pop a panadol, as you do, you'll be right," said his mother Janelle Wilson.
But on April 22, his pain increased and his mother in Newcastle began to worry.
"On the Tuesday, he called me, he said 'I need to go to the doctor because my headache is bad, it's throbbing. I can't get rid of it'," Ms Wilson said.
"I was concerned at that point, but I was keeping my cool."
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Having recently moved to Wagga from West Wyalong, Mr Convery had long suffered from hayfever, so it was assumed the headaches were related to his seasonal ailment.
As a precaution, his doctor sent him for a CT scan.
"Thank God they did," Ms Wilson said.
"He went off to work on the Thursday, he was meant to have the scan [the next] Monday, but he came home from work sick with blurry vision."
The scan was brought forward to 3pm that afternoon.
"At 4pm, he called me and he said they'd told him he couldn't drive and he had to go straight to the hospital," Ms Wilson said.
"I was thrown into a panic then. I was still at work, but I dropped everything, picked up my sister and we drove [to Wagga]."
Arriving in the early hours of Friday morning, Ms Wilson was informed of her son's diagnosis.
"They'd found lesions in his brain and his lung. It was cancer, it was devastating for all of us," she said.
The scans revealed at least 15 tumors in Mr Convery's brain with a primary mass on his lung.
With so many tumors in so many different places, neurosurgery was not an option.
Instead, this week he has begun a course of immunosuppressants medication. But it will be an expensive, and potentially shortlived treatment option.
"It's costing about $12,500 a month," Ms Wilson said.
"Eventually it won't work. It [ the cancer] will become immune to it. Considering how quickly it's spread, there's one more drug he can try, and then there are no other options after that."
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To assist with the enormous cost of the medication, Ms Wilson started up a GoFundMe fundraiser which has so far reached $160,000.
"It's skyrocketed. My sister [...] are blown away that so many people care about him," Ms Wilson said.
"He's embarrassed by it. He doesn't want to take people's money."
With the uncertainty still surrounding Mr Convery's situation, Ms Wilson has vowed to avail herself of every possible option to keep her son alive.
The rarity of his situation, Ms Wilson said, is cold comfort as the family confronts the enormity of the diagnosis.
"He's a non-smoker, non-drinker, he's looked after himself, he runs, he swims, it all looks like nothing's wrong with him," Ms Wilson said.
"It's confronting for a 24-year-old to have to look at their own mortality like this."
Darian's GoFundMe page can be found here.
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