On July 27th 2014 my brave Dad lost his fight to Lung Cancer at 55. I am heartbroken, angry, upset, scared, lonely but I am also very passionate about helping others and raising awareness.
I firmly believe if my Dad had been correctly diagnosed at the start of his symptoms he wouldn't have been taken from us so soon.
He was continually sent away from the doctor surgery with antibiotics and told it was maybe a chest infection, pneumonia, or bronchitis. It wasn't until the 4th visit that we decided to go Private for a consultation that we found out what it really was. The consultant knew straight away from just listening to Dads breathing, at which point he ordered a CT scan the following day. And the following day they noticed the dark shadow mass which other scans had "failed to show" which was impossible. The consultant then ordered a biopsy be taken, and days later we had the phone call to confirm it was Lung Cancer.
At this stage the consultant had booked Dad in for a PET scan in Nottingham to determine whether the Cancer had spread, bear in mind at this stage we all thought it was just a mass in the right lung, so it may have been operable. The PET scan unfortunately showed the cancer had spread to the bones, neck and liver, at which point it was stage 4 terminal.
I actually left the consultants room to be physically sick, then composed myself and walked back in the office to hear what he had to say. I looked into my Dads eyes and could see the fear, I had never ever seen my Dad scared. It was eery and surreal.
Dad composed himself and asked the consultant what the prognosis was, he went on to tell us 10 months..... I felt sick to my core... 10 months left with my Dad, who the hell has the right to tell anyone that???? I was mad at the consultant inside but he was only doing his job.
We had time to sit as a family before we went into see the oncologist to discuss treatment options. Luckily for Dad he did have private health so the chemo was going to start a lot quicker than it would have on the NHS. But still I couldn't believe I had just been told 10 months.
The rest of the story is for another time but my point is that if Dad has been properly diagnosed by the Doctor the first time he went in maybe we wouldn't be facing stage 4, maybe we could be facing stage 1/2. No one wants to deal with Cancer whether you have it or your helping someone fight it, but if the Dr's weren't so quick to send people away with antibiotics etc and actually looked at the worst case scenario then there would be a lot more people still with us today.
