Page 10 - Inspire

“When it came to constructing the campaign, as always
we turned to our advocates,” continues Rachel. “Their
personal experiences are always at the heart of our
campaigns.

So, in order to emphasise the importance of time, not
only did we want to share the stories of people who had
been diagnosed early, or were living well with late stage
disease, we also wanted to share the stories of people
who had lost a loved one. People who had ignored
symptoms or dismissed them to provide a stark
warning to others - lung cancer won’t wait for the
pandemic to be over, so neither must you.”

Dipti Goraniya was one of the many to step forward
and help spread this vital message. She lost her Dad,
Keshu, and is desperate to prevent this from happening
to others:

“Dad had been losing weight for a while, but he was
quite happy about it! He told us he’d been watching
his diet and was looking pretty good.

He then developed a cough. At the time, we didn’t think
too much of it. Dad dismissed it too. Like many men, he
wasn’t a fan of the doctors. He would always just write
it off as ‘it’ll be fine’. But the cough hung around and
started to get quite bad, so my mum and I eventually
persuaded him to go.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing. Knowing what I know
now about lung cancer, as soon as that weight loss
happened, we shouldn’t have listened to my Dad
saying ‘it’s just diet’. He’d never lost weight - what were
we thinking?

I wish we’d questioned all these things when they were
happening. The cough was there, and we never
questioned it, and we’ve lost him as a result. I don’t
know if he would still be here if we had known about it
or pushed a bit harder.

I wish I could just go around with a big sign on my back
which says ‘If you’ve got a cough, just go to the doctor’.
If there’s anything you feel is not right, you have to go
to your doctor, not just for yourself but for your loved
ones too.”