Meet Natasha
I'm a primary school teacher from Leeds. I've got two teenage children, a husband and two crazy dogs. I've always been incredibly fit and healthy up until a couple of years ago. I still run a few 10Ks, take my dogs on hilly walks, mountain bike and I used to climb.
In June 2022, I developed a bit of squeaky breathing, and my voice went husky, but I didn't think much of it. I put it down to stress, as it came and went. By the August, I thought that maybe I was developing asthma or long covid as I had a dry cough too.
My work colleagues encouraged me to see my GP. She was brilliant and gave me chest exam and said, “It all seems very clear, but there's something going on”.
She gave me some inhalers and sent me for a chest x-ray. Then she phoned and told me they’d found something on the top of my right lung. She told me not to worry, but it needed further investigation.
"I was told it was unlikely to be cancer."
The chest clinic decided it was likely I had Tuberculosis (TB) because of the symptoms. They investigated the TB diagnosis for about five weeks and then concluded that they couldn’t find any evidence of it.
They started investigating for cancer. I went through the cancer diagnosis process: bronchoscopies, PET scans, etc. At the beginning of December. I got my diagnosis. I was told I had non-small cell lung cancer.
The team tested me for EGFR, a genetic alteration in the tumour. I got the results quickly and they still believed I was stage three, so curable. I’d be given chemotherapy to reduce the size from 7.5cm, then surgery and followed up by a targeted therapy called Osimertinib.
"Just before my chemotherapy started we were called to see my consultant."
My consultant explained that NICE guidelines dictated that they couldn’t give me chemotherapy before surgery, it wasn’t licenced. I had to have surgery.
Whilst I waited for surgery, I had my CT scans repeated. I'd started to get headaches, which I mentioned to the team. They decided to do a brain scan as well. They found three brain metastases.
Within two hours, I was told there would be no surgery, no chemotherapy, this is Stage 4. It’s incurable.
But there was a light at the end of the tunnel Osimertinib was available as a palliative treatment. I have had a good reaction to it, my latest scan shows no brain metastases or the affected lymph nodes and I had a reduction in the main tumour - so good news.
“It took six months from symptoms to diagnosis of a lung cancer in the end.”
I had months of repeated reassurances of ‘it’s just an infection’, even after my PET scan showed activity in my lung and lymph nodes, the consultant was still seeing this as an infection.
It was my sister who got angry as I started to get panicky: I had to say, I have two teenage girls, if this is cancer, it is growing inside me and I need to get something done.
I became very frustrated because this is my life. Even when they did finally diagnose me with a cancer, the reassurances continued, telling me it’d be curable. So, I went from ‘this is highly curable’ in January to, a month later, ‘it’s terminal’. Those words are mind blowing, the first thing you think of is “how long have I got?”