A YOUNG Furness mum has vowed to “make some memories” for her son, after being diagnosed with terminal cancer.

Briar Anise Butler, 30, from Dalton, was told this week that the brain tumour she has been fighting for the past three months is incurable.

Her friends and family have been quick to rally around and set up a crowdfunding page to help give Briar and her four-year-old son Noah a Christmas trip to Lapland.

Miss Butler said: “I’m doing this for Noah, to give him some memories of me before I go. I’m so scared that he won’t remember me.

“He loves Santa and he loves Christmas, so I know that it will be perfect.”

She has had six operations so far, since falling ill in June. Following a spell of headaches that lasted around five or six weeks, Miss Butler collapsed at home and was found by police.

“My mum hadn’t heard from me for 24 hours,” she said. “I hadn’t been answering the phone, so she notified the police.

“They came round and found me unresponsive on the floor with my son’s bicycle helmet on – I was trying anything to relieve the pain.

“I don’t remember a lot about it, and I didn’t even recognise my mum when I woke up in Royal Preston Hospital. My short-term memory isn’t great.

“They just told me I had a brain tumour, but I haven’t had a proper diagnosis until this week.”

The former Ulverston Victoria and Barrow Sixth Form College student’s diagnoses have dated back some eight years, with the brain tumour – a type 4 glioblastoma – the result of a lifelong condition that has only been diagnosed this week.

She continued: “I was actually diagnosed as bipolar when I was 22 because my behaviour was unstable, and it’s only now that they’ve said to me that it was because of the tumour. It was a birth defect from conception.

“A few months ago, I also overdosed on Tramadol that I was taking to relieve the pain in my head. I was getting headaches for five or six weeks that wouldn’t go away.

“When the tumour was finally removed, doctors told me it was the biggest one they’ve ever removed.”

During her stay in the Royal Preston Hospital, she has not been able to see much of her son, who has been living with her mum, Beverley Shirreffs.

Last Wednesday, however, Miss Butler was allowed to leave hospital to see Noah start school at Our Lady of the Rosary School, in Dalton. “I had to get up at 5am to have my antibiotics so that I could get back from Preston to see him off to school.

“Noah was more happy about me being there than anything else. He was saying, ‘my mummy’s better’.

“He’s been brilliant, just so amazing. When he saw me, he said ‘your hair’s grown back!’, but I told him it was just a wig. ‘Well you look beautiful mummy’ is what he said.

“He doesn’t understand everything that’s happened, and he doesn’t know I’m dying.

“My mum’s been coming to Preston every day, but it’s a long drive for him. I just want to spend every day with him now, as I’ve not really seen him much over the last few months.”

The GoFundMe campaign had already reached almost £500 of its £2,000 total, and her friend Esha Doherty, from Barrow, said that a trip to Lapland is the least that the pair deserve.

She said: “After her diagnosis, the one thing Briar said she really wanted to do was take Noah to Lapland to see Santa, but after speaking with her mum, they were a little tight for money. We want to fundraise to be able to send them there.

“I’m just raring to go now – the fundraising is my motivation.

“We all love her to pieces, she is amazing – and if the shoe was on the other foot, we know she’d do it for anyone too.”

Thanking her close friends, four sisters and her mum for their support, Miss Butler said that the ordeal has brought them closer together.

She said: “My youngest sister, Jools, is only 19, but she shaved her head when I had mine shaved just to show me some support.

“My friends and family have all been amazing with everything.”

A palliative care nurse will be assigned to look after Miss Butler at home, and she has an appointment to discuss the option of radiotherapy to prolong her life once the skin graft on her head has healed sufficiently.

“I want to try everything I can,” she said.