Page 3 - Inspire Magazine 2019

When Eileen Hewson was
diagnosed with late stage
lung cancer, she was
terrified – not at the
prospect of dying, but at
missing out on her trip of
a lifetime.

For fifty years, Eileen had
dreamt about travelling
to the remote kingdom
of Mustang in Nepal and
she wasn’t going to let her
diagnosis stop her making
that dream a reality.

“My life was travel, in India and
the Himalayas. I was actually in
Bhutan and Sikkim when I
noticed what was to be my
first symptom.

I had a slight cough, but did
not take any notice of it until
one night when I coughed up
a lot of blood. I knew I had to
do something, and I had to do
it fast.

I was sent for an x-ray. I knew
it was serious when, only
hours afterwards, I got a call
from my GP. My right lung had
partially collapsed, and I had a
‘lung mass’ – a tumour.

My first reaction was shock.
This simply could not be true.
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