A grandma battling cancer missed out on her last ever chance to go abroad following the collapse of Thomas Cook .
Margaret Smart, 71, had paid £1,700 for a two-week sunshine getaway in Turkey with her husband and her daughter and was due to fly out last Saturday.
The pensioner and her family had decided to go on holiday to she could unwind before undergoing major surgery to remove parts of her bladder, lymph nodes and kidney on October 15.
But the travel agent's collapse means Margaret will never be able to have a foreign break again due to medical reasons, reports Stoke Sentinel .
The great-great grandmother-of-two, from Fenton, Stoke-on-Trent, said: "We've lost our holiday. We've currently lost £1,700 per couple and we booked the holiday 18 months ago. It was going to be my very last holiday abroad due to medical reasons.
"I'm going in for major surgery for bladder cancer. We wanted to go away beforehand with my husband, daughter and her partner.
"We would have been coming home on October 12 and my surgery is booked for the 15th, but I won't be getting the two weeks relaxation I had planned.
"The holiday would have meant everything. The kind of surgery I'm having I will not be able to go abroad again so we went all out and booked a five-star hotel right on the beach to make it special with it being the last one.
"We found out that the holiday would be cancelled on the TV. It came up on the news on the Friday that they were in trouble then by Monday they were in liquidation.
"We were absolutely gutted and disappointed but relieved that we were still in this country and not stuck abroad. It was a shock because Thomas Cook are such a long-running company and we didn't expect it - we've travelled with Thomas Cook for years."
Margaret's daughter Katrina joined her mother to get information about how to make a claim when a pop-up branch was set up by former Thomas Cook staff in Longton on Monday.
Katrina, 51 and from Fenton, said: "It's very distressful but we're also gutted for the staff because they've lost their jobs and we've lost a holiday.
"We've had a bit of upset but we will get our money back whereas these people have lost their income. We haven't got that to worry about.
"We're still very lucky really that we weren't abroad when it happened and we don't have that to deal with. The holiday would have meant everything to us at the minute but there's more important things in life and these people have lost their jobs which is a lot more important. The staff couldn't have done more than."
