To all intents and purposes Alan was extremely fit ay the start of 2005. Although 72 years old he looked younger and enjoyed regular excercise. In January 2005 we swam in the sea while on holiday in Gran Canaria; in mid-February we did a walk in the Peak District involving a steep hill and Alan coped better than I did despite the fact that I am 13 years younger. Then, in the second week in March, Alan developed what seemed like bronchitis. He was prescribed anti-biotics by his GP and recovered to the extent that he was able to walk over a mile from a local shopping centre back home. That weekend, however, he suddenly became breathless after having taken the dog for a short walk. He was admitted to hospital the following Tuesday (22nd March) with a pleural, effusion of the right lung. His lung was drained and by the end of the week, partly because it was the Easter weekend, he was allowed home without any further tests being conducted.
When he was discharged I specifically asked a junior doctor, if he could have a tumour and she told me “No”. I feel she should have told me that it was not possible to tell at that stage. As a result when Alan’s breathlessness recurred within a day of his discharge, we did not return to the hospital but struggled on for another week. By the time Alan was readmitted it was the weekend and there were no specialist doctors on duty so that he did not have a biopsy until the following Tuesday. We had to wait a further two weeks until the 19th April for the results. This was four and a half weeks after Alan’s first symptoms. By this time, when the doctor attempted to drain the pleural cavity, she could not do so as the fluid had thickened considerably.
Alan was then referred to a specialist unit at Glenfield Hospital in Leicestershire, but it proved too late to do anything to slow down the progress of the tumour and although they performed a surgical procedure (decortification), the beneficial effects were minimal. Alan was referred to an oncologist on the 19th May, but by then was too weak to benefit from chemotherapy and died on the 27th May, ten weeks after first becoming breathless.
I am haunted by how quickly Alan’s illness progressed and concerned at how little sense of urgency was shown when he was first admitted to hospital. Although questions were asked early on about asbestos, no real effort seem to be made to follow these up by conducting tests. Alan also saw many different doctors and there seemed a lack of a particular doctor tracking Alan’s progress.
I am sure others will have had similar experiences, but if there is to be any possibilty of prolonging the life of someone with an aggressive type of mesothelioma, then speed of diagnosis is surely essential and I do feel Alan was failed in this way. I have taken up the issue with the local hospital and received various assurances. I felt, however, that in order to encourage better medical practice, I should like my husband’s experience to be more widely known.
Alan had been a Modern Languages teacher and his contact with asbestos was probably as a result of a school’s building programme.
Carol Anthony
