My wife might have lived if she hadn’t missed out on final scan
TRIXIE Gough died of breast cancer just days after her 7 th birthday.
Her husband of 55 years Brian said the disease could have been spotted earlier had a computer error not meant she missed out on her final scan.
Mr Gough said when he saw Jeremy Hunt’s speech about the blunder yesterday he realised his wife had been affected. ‘I was completely gobsmacked and knew straight away Trix was one of the people never given a scan,’ he said.
‘I’m devastated, I have her ashes next to me. I’m amazed that it has taken them the best part of a decade to spot the problem. It’s extraordinary.’
The 77-year-old from Norfolk added: ‘There are thousands of real people involved in this, people like Trixie, who didn’t deserve to lose their lives.
‘I’m not saying she wouldn’t have got cancer but it could have been found earlier if she was given the scan. You have to wonder if the result would have been different.’
Mrs Gough failed to receive the notification to make an appointment for screening by the time she was 71, her husband said.
In October 2010 she found a lump in her breast and immediately saw her GP who sent her for a scan and she was diagnosed with breast cancer.
She had surgery followed by radio therapy and chemotherapy but after two years the cancer returned and she again went through a period of chemotherapy and blood transfusions.
The disease spread to her other organs and she lost her life on December 28 2015.
‘We worked all our lives and this was the time we wanted to enjoy together. That’s not possible now. She’s gone and I live alone,’ Mr Gough said.
‘It’s been very painful going over this again but she was a wonderful, brave, uncomplaining wife for almost 5 years and she is still missed enormously by all of the family.
‘Doctors said I slipped through the net’
MAUVEEN Stone, who was diagnosed with breast cancer in August, claims doctors said she had ‘slipped through the net’. The 84-year-old from Yeovil in Somerset had her last screening in 1995 when she was 2 and was given the all-clear. However, she was never again invited to another screening or her final routine scan when she turned 70.
It was only last year when she discovered a lump in her breast that she sought a check-up and doctors discovered a slow-growing cancer.
The former pub landlady and great-grandmother had to undergo surgery to remove four lymph nodes.
‘The doctors were surprised that my last screening had been in 1995. They said I must have slipped under the net,’ the mother of five said.
‘If I was invited for a screening I most definitely would have gone like I did in 1995. I do not know why I did not get any more letters. I have been at the same address since.
‘It was not something I thought about until I felt the lump. As my cancer was slow growing I don’t know how long it has been present or if it would have made a difference if I went earlier.
‘But it may well have been spotted earlier if I had been sent the invitation. I was very lucky it was slow growing.
‘Other women might not have been so lucky.’
Mrs Stone who has been given the all clear now has to undergo annual screenings.
‘I want to know why this happened’
Patricia Minchin was diagnosed with breast cancer two years after she failed to get a letter for her final routine breast scan. The 75-year-old believes she was a victim of the error because she was due the check-up in 2013 at the age of 70 but was never sent the notification and was not screened. Two years later she
was diagnosed with breast cancer and feels she could have avoided the ‘trauma’ of the disease with earlier screening.
‘I look back now and think, you know, everything that happened since could possibly have been avoided or lessened,’ she said.
‘The whole journey I went on, the traumatic journey, all the treatment may never have had to happen.’ Mrs Minchin said she received her last letter from the breast screening programme in 2010 and was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2015. She told Sky News yesterday: ‘I would like somebody to tell me how it could possibly happen that I haven’t been invited for a mammogram since 2010.’