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A ‘fit and healthy’ father received a devastating cancer diagnosis after a bizarre symptom triggered a trip to the doctors—a lasting smell of caramel.
Stoke-on-Trent chip shop owner Costas Fantis, 57, knew something was wrong when once a month he kept smelling the scent of the sweet treat.
After several tests and a biopsy, the dad-of-four was diagnosed with stage 4 IDH-wildtype glioblastoma—the most aggressive type of brain cancer—in April 2024.
Costas’ son, Antonio, 27, a quantity surveyor, from Stoke-on-Trent, said: ‘All of our lives have just been flipped upside down.
‘His sense of smell changed and he kept getting this strange sweet caramel smell.
‘We didn’t think much of it. We definitely didn’t know it was a symptom of something so serious.’
The unusual change of smell was also Consta’s only symptom.
Antonio said: ‘It’s really bizarre because symptoms wise he didn’t have much at all.
‘On the odd occasion he would have a caramel smell, a sweet smell. But it would happen very quickly, and once a month or so.
‘From what we now know, they define them as mini seizures, they last seconds, nothing happens to you whilst you do it.’
Costas initially suspected epilepsy, having dealt with it as a child.
‘As a family we didn’t really look into it much,’ Antonio said. ‘But we told him to have a scan and said it’s probably going to be in relation to the epilepsy.
‘We weren’t really thinking anything of it at all as he was a really fit and healthy man.’
But in April, the family were hit with the life changing diagnosis, Costas had stage four brain cancer.
And it wasn’t until a biopsy that the full extent of Costas’ condition was revealed—the tumour was inoperable.
‘We didn’t really know how to take it,’ Antonio added.
‘We were worried, scared, nervous but then still trying to get to grips with the situation and what was going on because he had no symptoms.
‘It just kind of proves that you can be a fit and healthy man yet still have something wrong with you.’
Since the diagnosis, Costas, from Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire, has completed NHS radiotherapy and chemotherapy – the only treatment currently available in the UK.
The family are now fundraising for alternative treatments in Germany.
Antonio said: ‘The only things the NHS offer, which is the massive problem, and why we’re doing the fundraising, is a course of radiotherapy and chemotherapy.
‘In the last 20 years the treatments haven’t changed for glioblastomas in the UK.
‘So it’s quite a scary thing to be diagnosed with, knowing that there’s not much the NHS can do.
‘Put it this way, they’re telling us in the consultancy meetings not to cut back on anything and just enjoy your life, in the most harrowing way possible.’
The disease strikes around 3,000 Britons and 12,000 Americans each year.
Average survival time for glioblastoma is between 12 and 18 months, according to the Brain Tumour Charity. Only 5 per cent of patients survive five years, it says.
The disease killed the Labour politician Dame Tessa Jowell in 2018.
In 2023 , The Wanted singer Tom Parker also died following an 18-month battle with stage four glioblastoma.
He said after his diagnosis that he was ‘shocked’ at the limited treatment options for GBM and ‘massive improvements’ were needed.
Diagnosed patients usually undergo surgery to remove as much of the tumour as possible.
This is followed by daily radiation and chemo drugs for around six weeks, after which the drugs are scaled back.
Radiation can be then used to destroy additional tumour cells and treat those who are not well enough for surgery.
But the cancer can double in size in just seven weeks.
For comparison, the fastest-growing lung cancers take 14 weeks to double.
Common symptoms include headaches that keep getting worse, nausea and vomiting, blurred or double vision, trouble speaking, altered sense of touch, and seizures.
