A student found out he had a brain tumour the size of a tennis ball after his hands began to shake – in a nerve-racking job interview.
Grant Cadden, 17, had always dreamed of being an engineer and was over the moon when he secured an interview as an apprentice stonemason.
But during a practical test for the position the teenager’s arm began to shake uncontrollably – so much that he failed the test and returned home disappointed.
But when the shaking continued his worried mother Rona, 43, took him to visit the doctor, who immediately sent him to hospital.
And to Grant’s shock doctors found a benign tumour growing on the right side of his brain, which is believed to have been growing since he was a child.
Following a gruelling 13-hour operation Grant was allowed home and just three weeks later returned to school.
Eight months on Grant is now well enough to attend college where he is looking forward to a bright future in renewable technology engineering.
Grant said: “My hand shook the entire time I was in the interview. I had to do a practical test with a piece of stone and I just couldn’t control myself.
“When I saw the tumour on the scan I was in disbelief. I just wanted to get it out of me. I’ve been very lucky.”
Grant had noticed recurring twitches in his arm as far back as September 2011, but doctors put the shaking down to a fall in 2011 in which he badly cut his arm.
But it wasn’t until his job interview in February last year that the twitches became uncontrollable.
Grant, 16 at the time, was taken to a doctor and within a week transferred to Ross Hall private hospital in Glasgow where a CT scan revealed a tumour in his brain.
The teenager underwent an operation at Glasgow Southern General Hospital on May 4, and spent two weeks in hospital before being allowed to return to his home in Paisley, Scotland.
Grant, added: “My mum was more scared than I was at the time.
“It was really surreal. I couldn’t believe the size of it and that it was inside my head.
“In a way it was easier that it was happening to me, if it had been someone else in my family I would have been much more nervous.
“I feel amazing now. I’m really grateful to everyone that has helped me, especially the staff and nurses at the hospital.”
Grant went back to school within three weeks and finished school before taking a place at Paisley’s Reid Kerr College.
The St Mirren season ticket holder is now looking forward playing football with his friends and picking up his beloved bagpipes again, something he has not been a loud to do during his treatment.
Grant’s family has set up the Grant Cadden Fund to raise money for Southern General Hospital.
Grant’s mum Rona, a shop worker, said: “Not for a second did we think the twitching was anything to do with Grant’s brain.
“He went to a doctor but he said it was nothing, but after the job interview we knew something was wrong.
“Grant is back to normal now, he’s at college and doing well. We are all very proud of him.”
