11-Year-Old's Brain Tumor Discovered After Roller Coaster Ride: 'We Found It Before It Spread'

A mom is alleging that a roller coaster “dislodged” a then-undetected malignant tumor in her daughter’s brain, giving the 11-year-old symptoms that eventually alerted the family to her condition — and ultimately, saved her life.

Two days after Connie Campbell, now 13, went with her family to a U.K. amusement park in August 2022, she began having headaches and vomiting. Her mom, Tina Smith, said she believed that riding a coaster at the park revealed her daughter's symptoms and helped resolve the situation.

“It was two days later that she started being sick, which seems too much of a coincidence for the two things not to be related,” Smith, 54, told South West News Service via The Daily Mail. “I suspect the rides dislodged her tumor and, if that's the case, I'm glad because I was told we found it at a good time, before it spread to her spine.”

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Campbell was diagnosed with medulloblastoma, a type of brain tumor that starts in the back of the brain. As the Cleveland Clinic noted, it is a fast-growing type of cancer: “There’s a higher chance of survival if the medulloblastoma hasn’t spread to other parts of your brain and spinal cord."

Although it was caught early, Campbell missed a year of school as she underwent aggressive treatment, which included brain surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation. Her mom is now raising money for Brain Tumor Research with a charitable run in the London marathon.

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As Smith wrote on the fundraising page, “The early words of her neurosurgeon always stuck with me - ‘this is a marathon, not a sprint’. Not an optional run; a survival run. She continues to thrive and amaze us, which has inspired me to take on a marathon of my own.”

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Thankfully, Campbell's most recent MRI scan was clear, Smith wrote in a Dec. 19 post on the Instagram page she started to share her daughter’s journey.

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In October, on the second anniversary of Campbell's brain surgery, she shared that pediatric cancer “is a unique special club one that doesn’t come with a membership fee nor one you want to be in but we find ourselves in a community of the most amazing kids with strongest of parents going to the end of the world to make their children better if they can - we do anything for them. "

"Today I’m thankful that I could wave Connie off this morning to do what she loves doing – dancing," Smith added.

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