Page 5 - Inspire Autumn/Winter Edition 2017

She Saved Me
“But Karen couldn’t find me an appointment with my
usual doctor before my holiday.
“I would have just left it, but she insisted that a cough
like mine should be looked into so she squeezed me in
to see another doctor at a different surgery and that is
where I got lucky.
“The doctor I saw was sufficiently concerned to send
me for a chest X-ray which showed up something that
shouldn’t have been there. So they sent me for another
X-ray, and at that point the system really started to
swing into action. I had CT scans and a biopsy and it
started to look more and more likely that it was lung
cancer.
“I realised from the “ Karen made it possible for me
way the doctor
spoke to me that to say to my daughter,
she thought it was ‘You’re not going to lose another never met up with the receptionist – or, to
serious. I had a parent to lung cancer.’
tumour, but there I can’t thank her enough.
could have been
various reasons for it. It still wasn’t conclusive.
“It was a long process and a worrying time, both for
me and for my partner. It became so disruptive to our
normal lives that we just cancelled everything and put
life on hold until we knew for sure.
“The most awful part of it all was thinking about my
daughter, because her father had died of lung cancer the
year before and she had looked after him for months
before he passed away. I just couldn’t face the thought of
having to tell her about my own illness.
“But I reasoned with myself that I was actually feeling
ok; I had no idea there’d been anything wrong with me
whereas he’d been noticeably ill for three or four years
before he died. So, hopefully, they had caught mine early
and it would have a different outcome – which it did,
completely different.
“I was referred to the surgical team at St James’s
Hospital in Leeds, where the doctors outlined different
treatment options, with all the advantages and
disadvantages. I thought that losing a chunk of my lung
would leave me permanently disabled.
“I thought about it all, and when I spoke to the
radiographer the following week, he passed on the
thought that, if it was him, he wouldn’t hesitate –
he’d have the operation.
“So the following week, I had surgery. They took out
one lobe of my lung and the associated lymph nodes.
Only after they did biopsy tests on the tissue they took,
were they able to confirm that it was lung cancer – and
that they’d got it all.
“Karen made it possible for me to say to my daughter,
‘You’re not going to lose another parent to lung cancer.’
I can’t thank her enough.”
Shan now has regular check-ups and the medical team
will continue to monitor her progress for the next five
years. She takes part in our online forum, replying to
posts about surgery and treatments similar to her own.
She’s come a long way in the past couple of years and
she knows how much she owes to the
woman whose diligence paved the way for the
rest of her lung cancer journey. Yet she had
use the proper job title, Patient Services
Advisor – who went the extra mile to arrange
” an appointment with the doctor that fateful
day. Never, that is, until August of this year,
when she finally sat down for a cup of tea and a chat
with Karen Gibson.
Karen lost a much loved relative to cancer a few
months before Shan came into the surgery – a loss,
she thinks, which may have made her extra aware of
the need to have seemingly minor symptoms checked
out properly.
“I can remember Shan coming in. A lot of people were
coming in at that time with bad lung infections, it went
on for about three or four months – we had a lot of
calls. But there was something in the back of my mind.
It’s just instinct.
“It could have been any one of us. Like they say in the
‘Be Clear on Cancer’ campaign, we know if someone’s
had a cough for that long, they need to be seen. So
when I knew she was going away on holiday, I knew we
had to get her sorted. So it was a case of finding a
doctor who could see her soon enough.
“It feels strange to know that what I did made such a
difference!”
You can make a difference too.
Your support means we can continue to fund our
Lung Health MOT Check and keep saving lives.
Autumn/Winter 5