Angus McInnes was 10 when he was told his big brother Isaac was sick.
“I remember my parents telling me, and I did not know what a brain tumour was,” Angus tells 9honey.
“I didn’t know it at all. I thought it was just another sickness. Then as, the months went on, I realised how bad it was.”
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Angus remembers Isaac undergoing new treatments “but nothing was really working.”
“It was such an awful experience and, [I remember] me kind of feeling helpless for it, but I just tried to keep him positive and happy through it all,” he says.
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“He was always my big brother, so it was kind of difficult for roles to be reversed.”
He thought doctors could “fix” his brother, “and then they just suddenly can’t.”
Mum Geraldine recalls trying multiple treatments to try and save their son.
“My husband has this saying, that we could have dipped him in honey and it still would have had the same outcome,” she says.
“By the end, half of him was paralysed. We got him around in a wheelchair. He was incontinent. He’d get shocking headaches, really, really bad headaches.
“So then he had to have a shunt put into his brain because there’s so much swelling … with the fluid buildup that that’s gotta be drained somehow.”
Geraldine says they didn’t believe until the very end that Isaac, 11, would die.
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“He went into a coma in the sort of late October, and then we transferred to Bear Cottage, and then he died in November.”
Five years on from the loss of her son, Geraldine describes the grief as coming “in waves.”
“The grief can just hit you, and then other times you can sort of function,” she says.
Angus struggled after Isaac’s death, but was supported by his friends and the community of the school both brothers attended.
On June 24, the school is rallying around the family once more to raise funds for brain cancer research by hosting ‘Cut for a Cure’ for the Children’s Cancer Institute. The school has hosted a fundraiser each year since Isaac’s death in 2018.
The family has already raised over one million dollars in Isaac’s name via The Isaac Fund. For this year’s event they are hoping to add another $50,000 for crucial brain cancer research.
This year will be their biggest event yet, as it is Angus’ final year of school.
The craziest thing the 18-year-old has ever done to his hair thus far is to dye the tips blonde.
“I thought the boys would be more into the idea of getting a mullet rather than a shave,” Angus, 18, tells 9honey.
They’ll also be dying their hair crazy colours ahead of the event to ensure the mullets pop.
And it’s not only Angus and his friends cutting their hair, but teachers who taught both boys.
English teacher Jake O’Brien taught both boys and will be joining in the fundraising challenge.
”When Isaac sadly passed away, I could see it in my classroom how much they were rocked by it,” he tells 9honey.
“Isaac was special.”
He remembers Isaac coming to school the day after being in hospital for treatment and apologising for not having done his homework, or running late handing in an assessment.
“I can’t begin to talk about how amazing the family is,” O’Brien adds.
Kathryn Bignold, teacher at the school and head of Service, Education and Awareness, credits principal Jonathan Byrne with approving the fundraiser.
“Both Angus and Geraldine have spoken with Jonathan and they’ve had a good relationship with him for a while,” she says.
The school normally has a “strict hair policy” which they are setting aside for the final week of the school term.
“The dyeing will happen beforehand, because I don’t think that’s a possibility here.”
Former students will act as barbers, and Bignold is planning a “pink mohawk” as her contribution.
This is Angus’ final year of high school, and with Isaac’s legacy firmly established at the school, he is looking forward to the next phase of his life with plans to study law.
Isaac will never be far from his thoughts.
“I went from being a brother with a sibling to an only child, it was a completely new experience,” he says of his time at the school.
“[Isaac was] literally the best person I’ve ever met. [He] just took such good care of me.”
Geraldine says it took time to navigate their new reality as a family of three following Isaac’s death, describing their new reality as “a table that has lost its leg.”
“You’ve still got to stand up with the three legs and you’ve got a slight limp, but you’ve just got to patch it up with a few band-aids and keep going,” she says.
“Occasionally you’ll stumble a bit and get back into grief, but you’ve just got to keep going.”
She and Gary couldn’t be prouder of Angus and she thinks Isaac would have loved his little brother’s idea for this year’s fundraiser.
“He’d absolutely adored his brother, he just would have loved anything that Angus did,” Geraldine says.
“He was just such a good big brother. In so many of the many of the photos, he’s got his arm around him.
“And it’s without being asked.”
You can make a donation to Angus’ upcoming fundraiser or directly to The Isaac Fund.
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