A mum of two who has been told she has just weeks to live claims doctors twice missed the symptoms of her cancer.
Sarah Middleton, 48, was diagnosed with an advanced form of non-Hodgkins lymphoma in May 2022 – but two months beforehand, when she presented at A&E with sharp chest pains, doctors allegedly told her nothing was wrong. Derbyshire Live reports that she was told to go to hospital by an NHS helpline operator.
Medics took blood samples and concluded she either had a cancerous tumour or a pulmonary embolism – a type of blocked blood vessel. But after the embolism was ruled out, Sarah's husband Marius Grigoriu claims the prospect of cancer was not investigated.
Marius said: "The fact that now, barring some kind of miracle, we're almost certainly going to lose Sarah, is horrendous. She probably wouldn't be in the position she is in now and on end-of-life care if they'd have investigated it two months earlier.
"It's horrific. Sarah was badly let down."
While at the Royal Derby Hospital, Sarah says she begged nursing staff to check she was okay. She asked if they could feel her stomach due to swelling and a "heavy feeling" she'd noticed there.
The workers checked her stomach but advised that it was probably "post-Covid inflammation" and that there was nothing seriously wrong. Sarah had suffered a bout of the illness earlier in the year.
She went home, but over the next two months, her stomach continued to bloat until, Marius says, she appeared "pregnant". Sarah then went to her GP, who referred her for a CT scan that later identified cancerous growths on her lymph nodes.
Medics said the cancer was at stage 4b - described by Marius as "very advanced." She only got the results after going back to A&E again when her stomach pain became too much to bear.
After a small delay due to lack of beds and the Queen's Jubilee weekend, Sarah spent four months in hospital undergoing chemotherapy. But the treatment had not worked – and attempts to sign up for clinical trials of experimental treatments in the USA, Germany and Japan were rejected.
Her last resort was a specialist treatment known as CAR-T-cell therapy on the NHS, in which white blood cells are modified in the hope that they will attack cancerous cells. However, the treatment was only partially successful and, after a subsequent trial of an unapproved drug, Sarah was given the news she had been dreading.
Marius is hoping to use money raised from crowdfunding for a final round of chemotherapy that will keep Sarah alive long enough for her eldest daughter's next birthday.
He added: "Words don't really exist for how bad it is. Our family's been torn to pieces basically.
"My daughters aren't going to have a mother now and won't be able to turn to her for the small things like a bit of emotional support of something. They're not going to have that now. It's been a terrifying experience for all of us, to be honest with you."
Dr Sreeman Andole, interim executive director at University Hospitals of Derby and Burton, said: "We understand that this must be an extremely distressing situation for Sarah and her family and our thoughts are with them all at this difficult time. Unfortunately cancers can sometimes be complex, and each type of cancer is diagnosed and treated in a particular way.
"We would welcome Sarah's family contacting us directly so that we can fully investigate her case, provide support, and answer their questions and concerns."
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