Wilmington dog groomer dies after short battle with grade 4 brain tumour
A “kind” and “sympathetic” dog groomer who “everyone used to stop and talk to” has died after being diagnosed with a brain tumour which was initially dismissed as stress or a yoga injury.
Dianne Cooper, from Wilmington, first noticed something was not right last June when she began getting constant headaches and tingling in her fingers and toes on one side of her body.
After one doctor told her it was stress and another suggested it might be a yoga strain or a trapped nerve, she collapsed on a night out at the pub and took herself to A&E.
Tests revealed she had a grade 4 brain tumour.
Her only daughter, Shannon, said the previously fit and healthy former air stewardess was left paralysed and unable to talk in the last months of her life.
She died less than a year after being diagnosed, on April 21. She was 59.
Shannon said: “She had a really short but hard fight with a grade 4 brain tumour. After surgery she was left without her movement or speech but that did not stop her from making memories with her friends.
“We only wish we had more time.”
The tumour led to Dianne becoming totally paralysed down one side and days before she was due to have surgery, six weeks after her diagnosis, she lost her ability to speak.
She was told her speech and movement would start to return but it never did.
Shannon, a 27-year-old animator who lived with her mum after her dad died when she was just two, said they loved travelling together.
“She worked for British Airways and when I was little I would go with her on lots of her flights. We went to New York, Switzerland, Athens, skiing.
“In those days flight crew were allowed a couple of days in a destination before they took the flight home.”
‘We only wish we had more time’
And when Dianne left her job the mother and daughter continued taking trips together with three months travelling around Africa.
Shannon said her mum had big plans to continue seeing the world.
“She always had big dreams,” she said. “She still wanted to buy a campervan and go travelling around the UK. She just loved it.”
Equalling her love for seeing the world was her love for dogs and she ran Di's Top n Tails Dog Grooming and doggy day care business in Wilmington for seven years.
As well as being renowned for her love of dogs, Dianne was also well-known in the village as part of the Road Runners group and regularly joined in with runs and marshalling at various running events.
“Everyone used to stop and talk to her. People felt they could open up to my mum…”
“Mum was a huge part of the Wilmington community, whether people knew her from her iconic Di's Top n Tails Dog Grooming and doggy day care business, or from Dartford Road Runners every week, or just from seeing her quirky leggings across the field with her two boys, Spot and Kippy,” said Shannon.
“She will be very missed throughout the community.
“Everyone used to stop and talk to her. People felt they could open up to my mum.
“She was very, very kind. Sometimes too kind. And always so sympathetic.”
For the funeral, Shannon has requested that everyone wears plenty of colour as she said her mum “did not own one piece of black clothing”.
She has also asked for donations in lieu of flowers with 50% going to The Dogs Trust and the other 50% split between ellenor hospice and Blue Bird Care who cared for her mum.
Online donations can be made by clicking here.
On the day of the funeral on Tuesday, May 14, Shannon is asking anyone who knew Dianne to meet at The Close in Wilmington between 2.10pm and 2.15pm to walk behind the hearse to St Michael and All Angels Church.
Alternatively, meet at the church at 2.30pm.