After all, Errol was otherwise fit, healthy and active – going for cold water swims, playing sports and riding horses with parents Rider and Victoria, and his two younger brothers McLaughlin and Piers McDowell.
Mum Victoria and little Errol
Until then they enjoyed a “blissful life”, according to dad Rider.
“Errol’s mum Victoria and I would always say that we were so amazingly blessed,” the playwright tells Sun Health.
“We were, and are, a very tight knit family.
“But then our oldest boy started showing these symptoms out of nowhere.”
As well as headaches, Errol was complaining of dizziness and nausea.
The couple took him to a range of doctors, as well as holistic practitioners, but they were repeatedly told not to bother with an MRI as it could be “unnecessarily traumatic”.
However, Errol’s headaches continued, and there were now worrying new symptoms, like trouble balancing and numbness in his fingers.
After six months of reassurances from doctors, Rider decided to overrule the medical professionals and insist on a scan.
Devastatingly, Errol was diagnosed with medulloblastoma, a fast-growing malignant brain tumour, in January 2013.
“The radiologist came out with a very grave expression and gave us this terrifying news,” Rider says. “The scans showed a golf ball-sized mass near the brain stem.”
ERROL UNDERWENT IMMEDIATE BRAIN SURGERY A FEW DAYS BEFORE HIS 13TH BIRTHDAY.
While coming to terms with the family’s new normal, Rider felt despair at the lack of funding for paediatric cancers, especially brain tumours.
He was shocked by how little was known about paediatric brain cancer and other children’s cancers, and how little was being invested into research.
Teenage Errol and his beloved brothers and mum.
DEVASTATING DIAGNOSIS
Over the months that followed, Errol endured the most gruelling and brutal treatments, including radiation therapy and six months of chemotherapy.
For a while, the prognosis seemed good, with doctors saying that the treatment had gone well and that Errol would be cancer-free.
But devastatingly, a year after his original diagnosis, Errol’s cancer returned.
TAKEN TOO SOON
Errol, despite his enormous struggle, was committed to making his life on earth invaluable, and started a charity called Canceragaogo, along with his two brothers, to fund pediatric cancer research. The boys’ idea was to raise $1 from every American, all $360 of them, via a plastic donation card, like a credit card, with a QR code.
Over one million dollars was raised in amounts starting at $1 to $100,000 for several institutions including the Sabine Mueller Lab at UCSF, the Sam Cheshier Lab at University of Utah, UC Florida, the Robert Weschler Reya Lab at Sanford Burnham, and several others. Errol’s brothers, Mac and Piers have continued the legacy of Errol’s charitable spirit and have raised funds in London, where the boys, now 17, go to school. The boys hope to match the amount of money they raised in America, in the UK, and can be found handing out their Canceragogo cards about central London when on break from school.
Errol was diagnosed with medulloblastoma, a fast-growing malignant brain tumour
ERROL’S BROTHERS, AT SCHOOL IN ENGLAND, CONTINUE TO RAISE MONEY AND AWARENESS IN HIS MEMORY
Errol’s brothers, Mac and Piers, fundraising in London
‘We want to make a difference in Errol’s memory,’ his dad says
The brothers hand out the same reusable plastic cards with information and a QR code at public places about greater London.
They find that many of the people they speak to have a personal story with cancer and loss.
When people scan the QR code, they are encouraged to donate £1 and then pass the card to a friend.
“The fundraising was the only thing we could constructively do to fight back or try to make a difference in Errol’s memory,” Rider says.
“Errol created this charity with our other sons, and that was his way of fighting.”
Errol was the most extraordinary boy and his absence seems impossible