Lung cancer: one woman’s story

Putting down the box she had been carrying, Marion Brown leaned against a wall and took a deep breath.

She'd walked only 500 yards from the car to her daughter Jill's beauty salon, but the effort had left her gasping as if she'd ran up a hill.

She thought it was her asthma playing up. 'I'd been diagnosed with it years before and, although I didn't need to use my inhaler often, it occasionally flared up when I was walking uphill or for long distances, or carrying something heavy,' says Marion, 62, a retired district nurse who lives with her husband Kevin, 61, a retired engineering company director, in Gateshead, Tyne and Wear.

‘When she saw how out of breath I was, Jill begged me to get it checked out, but I brushed off her concerns. I wasn't feeling at all unwell and had no other symptoms. But days later, when I was still getting breathless, I decided to follow her advice. I thought I'd get a new inhaler and that would be that.'

Marion saw a young GP, instead of her usual doctor, who noted that she hadn't had her asthma investigated properly for some time, and sent her for a chest X-ray. It was a decision that probably saved Marion's life.

Just over a week later, she had an X-ray at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Gateshead - this revealed a small, opaque shadow on her right lung. 'The doctors thought it was scarring from an old infection, so they decided to leave it for four weeks to see if it would repair itself,' says Marion.

But when she returned for the follow-up X-ray in February 2010, the shadow was still there. 'The consultant turned to me and said I'd have to see someone else. My heart sank - I had enough knowledge from my time as a district nurse to know the outlook wasn't good.'

Within a week, Marion was back in hospital with Kevin to be told it might be cancer. 'But I didn't believe it could be. I felt too well for that,' she says.

Indeed, her scans and a biopsy came back clear. 'Thankfully, the consultant knew that it couldn't be nothing and he didn't want to send me away without investigating further,' she says.

A second biopsy found some suspicious cells on Marion's lung, and she was told she'd need surgery to remove them. Three weeks later, she had a lobectomy to remove the top segment of her right lung.

'As I walked into the consultant's office for the results, he took one look at me and asked why there was no one with me,' says Marion. 'I'd done such a good job of convincing myself it wouldn't be cancer that I'd decided it would be OK to go alone.' But then the consultant told Marion he'd removed a small - 3.7 cm - cancer 'which would probably buy me another five years'.

'I was devastated. I just couldn't believe it. I'd always thought of lung cancer as a heavy-smoking, old-man's disease.

'Years before, I'd been a social smoker, only smoking the odd cigarette when out with friends. In times of stress, I'd smoke a bit more, but I'd never have more than ten in any one day. Some days, I wouldn't have any at all. But when I was diagnosed with cancer, I hadn't actually smoked for ten years, because it had started to bring on my asthma. I just didn't think lung cancer would ever affect me.'

After surgery, Marion underwent chemotherapy and, in April, she will have been in remission for five years. She now tries to live her life to the full and is the picture of health.

'When I tell people that I had lung cancer, they don't believe me,' she says. 'Like me, they thought lung cancer only affected older men.

'I want everyone to be aware that anyone is susceptible and to know the symptoms - even if they have just one, like I did.

'Thanks to my daughter and that young GP, my cancer was detected early enough to give me a fighting chance. Without that, I may not have lived to feel as lucky as I do.'

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