A tumour the size of a marble sent my whole body haywire; Some doctors said she had IBS, others diagnosed neck problems and even the menopause. In fact Anna had a tiny cancer that can lurk undetected in your body for years…
0 Comments | Daily Mail (London, England), The, Oct 27, 2009
Byline: STEVE BOGGAN
ANNA ALLFORD was convinced the GPs at her surgery thought she was a raving hypochondriac. She didn’t blame them. After all, her symptoms seemed so random.
If she wasn’t complaining about explosive headaches, it was hot flushes or neck pain or sudden trouble breathing.
Add to that the wild extremes in her blood pressure, excruciating stomach pains, the embarrassing tendency to collapse after merely sipping alcohol and the need, midconversation, to sprint to the loo, and even she began to wonder whether her troubles might not be psychosomatic.
Her apparently unconnected symptoms led to a confusing mix of diagnoses. Over a period of three years, she was treated for asthma, flu, irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), allergies, breast swelling, inflammation of her neck muscles and the menopause.
‘I’m sure that whenever they saw me at the surgery, they must have thought: “What will that woman come up with next,” ‘ Anna says.
In fact, 50-year-old Anna, a former nurse who now works for a patient safety charity was far from being a hypochondriac: she was victim of a condition that doctors have come to call ‘quiet cancer’.
Her initial health problems began around seven years ago. Then — fortunately as it turned out — in 2006 she hurt her eye in a cooking accident. When the wound refused to heal, doctors at the eye hospital where she was treated suspected an underlying condition affecting her immune system.
They sent her for tests, including a routine chest X-ray. The result was devastating: it appeared Anna had cancer in her left lung.
‘I was crushed, and all I could think of was that I wasn’t going to see my daughter Sophie [then 16] grow up, get married, have children,’ she says. herbs for high blood pressure ‘I was prepared for surgery and expected to have the lung removed. I even made preparations for my funeral.’ However, when Anna came round in the recovery room, doctors told her she still had both lungs but they had removed a carcinoid — or neuroendocrine tumour (NET) — the size of a marble.
The neuroendocrine system controls the release of hormones in the body
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