A Surrey dad who was told he was just "dehydrated" after collapsing on a hot summer's day was later diagnosed with a brain tumour.

Josuha Baines, 34, had noticed he was becoming forgetful before he was found lying unconscious and covered in blood by his daughter, then four, in 2021, following a seizure.

The vicar was rushed to hospital, but doctors told him the seizure was just due to dehydration.

A few weeks later, Josh had another seizure, and a CT scan revealed a brain tumour, which was diagnosed as being aggressive and terminal in 2022.

Josh was given just a few years to live, but chemotherapy reacted better than expected, which Josh called an "answer to my prayers".

However, in October 2025, he was told it had spread to the back of his brain.

Josh is now fundraising for a treatment to help slow the spread of the cancer down, and give him more time with his kids.

The dad-of-three said: “I noticed something was wrong when I kept forgetting the lyrics to songs in church.

“I’d be leading the team and then I would just forget what was happening next, or where I was, it was so unlike me.

“One morning I remember walking into the bathroom, and starting to clean my teeth, and then I just felt so dizzy.

“I felt like I was somewhere else, like the dreamworld in Stranger Things.

“I passed out and my four year old daughter found me covered in blood on the floor.

“Doctors said I was just dehydrated, but over the next few weeks, I kept having horrific auras.

“I’d sweat like crazy, and I’d sit up in bed and I could almost see a figure in the doorway.

“It would happen when I was dropping off to sleep, it scared the life out of me.

“A few weeks later, I had another seizure, and then I was diagnosed with a brain tumour.

“When I got diagnosed it felt horrific, I just completely shut down, and felt so numb.

“Doctors told me the cancer was spreading really quickly, and that it was terminal, I fell off my chair and passed out, my wife was in pieces.

“Going through treatment is a bit like a McDonald’s drive through, you go in, do your scan, and they tell you if your cancer is better or worse, and how long you’re going to live.

“As a family, we just have to pretend things are normal, but it’s so hard.

"One of the hardest parts has been explaining things to our children in a way they can understand.

"We call MRI scans the “doughnut machine”, and when there was new growth found, we described it as an extra sprinkle on the doughnut.

"Sitting around the dinner table and answering questions honestly, including questions about death, forces you to hold hope and realism at the same time.

"As a parent, you realise very quickly that cancer isn’t just something happening in your body, it reshapes the emotional life of a home..

"My faith hasn’t removed the difficulty, but it has given me something to stand on when things feel uncertain."

Josh has always been terrified of getting cancer, as it affected his grandparents whilst he was growing up, and every morning as a teenager, would vomit out of fear and anxiety.

He first started to notice something was wrong when he began forgetting the lyrics to songs whilst leading events at church.

As his symptoms progressed, Josh began getting intense headaches, and halfway through performing a song, he suddenly wouldn’t know where he was, or what was going on.

Then on a midsummer's morning in 2021, Josh suddenly felt like he was extremely dizzy.

He then began to have an aura, a phenomenon that precedes a seizure, and causes abnormal sensations, feelings and changes in vision.

Josh passed out and banged his head on the door frame before collapsing to the floor.

His daughter found him lying on the floor covered in blood, and rushed to tell her mother Daisy, that Josh had passed out.

Daisy immediately called an ambulance, and Josh was raced to hospital, where doctors told him he was probably just “dehydrated”.

As Josh had been at the pub with a few friends the night before, and it had been a hot summer’s day, he trusted that he probably was dehydrated, and went home.

However, over the next few weeks, Josh began to experience regular “horrific” auras, where he hallucinated that someone was at the end of his bed.

A few weeks after his initial seizure Josh had another one, whilst he was in bed with his wife.

Daisy called the ambulance and Josh was rushed back into hospital again, where doctors gave him a CT scan.

Following the scan, doctors told Josh they had found a huge tumour on his brain, and he was eventually diagnosed with an astrocytoma terminal brain tumour.

Josh then went through chemotherapy, radiotherapy, and surgery, which kept the cancer at bay for a while.

However, after an MRI scan in October 2025, he was told the cancer had spread to the back of his brain.

The cancer is causing Josh to lose his sight and doctors are unable to operate on the tumour, but have offered him a treatment called Bevacizumab, which should slow down its growth, giving him more time to spend with friends and family.

However, the treatment is not funded by the NHS, and costs £9,042 every eight weeks.

Josh has set up a GoFundMe page to try and raise money for the treatment, so that he can spend more time making memories with his family.