Alistair Petrie has described the moment he feared his son Cal might not survive surgery for a rare and aggressive form of brain cancer. Cal Petrie, 23, was diagnosed with pineoblastoma after suffering headaches during a family holiday.
Cal underwent major surgery lasting 13 hours to remove 98% of the tumour, and has since endured further treatment. He appeared on Tuesday's (November 10) episode of This Morning alongside his father, who portrayed Michael Groff in Netflix's Sex Education and Sandy in The Night Manager, to tell his story.
The father and son were accompanied by Cal's surgeon, Arthur Dalton. Speaking to presenters Ben Shephard and Cat Deeley, Cal described the moment he realised something was seriously wrong after a week-long headache.
Holiday headache led to diagnosis
Cal said: "We were on holiday in Kenya and I did a very benign dive in the pool, and sort of came up and touched my head, and just assumed that it was dehydration or just a little impact sort of headache. I tried to drink loads of water and took medication."
He added: "That headache would last for about seven days, and that was sort of the time when we went, 'Right, this isn't quite normal, so let's go to the hospital' after being pushed quite a lot by my family and girlfriend."
While at the hospital, doctors told Cal it was probably a migraine. Following a CT scan, a build-up of fluid was discovered, meaning an operation was required. During the procedure, surgeons took a biopsy and initially believed the tumour was benign, before confirming it was malignant, with another operation booked for three days later.
Emotional moment before surgery
Alistair recounted the harrowing moment Cal was taken down for surgery as he feared for his son's life. He said: "The most emotional part for my wife, and I was when Cal had been prepped and spoken to by the anaesthetist and was being wheeled into the lift to go down into surgery.
"I put my hands on Arthur's shoulder, looked him square in the eyes, and said, 'Please, just bring him back'. And Arthur shook my hand and with a very faint smile, just said, 'I'm looking forward to it'.
"Arthur could be the only one to speak of what that really meant, but I took it as this was a man with an enormous amount of empathy and an astonishingly skilled set. As those lift doors closed, Lucy and I fell to the floor. Our knees literally buckled, that was our emotional reaction."
Treatment and recovery
After the operation, which successfully removed 98% of the tumour, Cal underwent a further six weeks of proton beam therapy — a treatment that uses precisely targeted high-energy protons to attack a tumour — alongside chemotherapy.
This Morning airs weekdays at 10am on ITV and ITVX.
