Grieving families’ anger
Grieving son hits out at breast scan blunders as families tell of heartache
Lee Towsey believes his mother is a victim of the ‘outrageous and disgusting’ screening scandal.
Rita Towsey, who died at the age of 70, was diagnosed with stage three cancer after finding a lump in her breast and going to her doctor.
Her son said Mrs Towsey had not been called for a screening for several years before her diagnosis – which could potentially have detected the cancer earlier.
He said: ‘My mum is dead, I can’t bring her back now, but what I do want is for someone to take responsibility for this. It’s outrageous and it’s disgusting. Someone has to be held responsible for this error. I know my mother and I know she would have gone along if she had been invited for a scan. But she just did not receive one.’
Mr Towsey, 52, added: ‘The doctors told her at the time that if she had come in sooner they would have been able to handle it better. She would have had a better chance.’
Mr Towsey, an events manager from Brighton, said that when he saw news of the scandal this week, he quickly realised his mother was a victim. He added: ‘It was only when she found the lump that she finally had the scan.
‘The last time we knew of her having a scan was many years ago. How did no one notice that women of a certain age across the country were not being screened?’
Mr Towsey says his mother should have been contacted, particularly because her records would have shown that she had a hysterectomy after suffering from cervical cancer in her 30s.
He said: ‘She had cancer before so she was at risk. She had scans for her breast at the time and I remember her telling me about it. But she was not called for her routine checks in her later life.’ Mr Towsey has tried contacting the new NHS helpline set up to assist those affected, but said he found it was ‘not fit for purpose’.
Retired domestic assistant Mrs Towsey, who lived in Deal, Kent, found a lump in her breast in 2010. She passed away two years later, leaving behind her husband of 50 years Keith, two children and five grandchildren.
Mr Towsey, a retired caretaker, died shortly after from what his son described as a ‘broken heart’.
‘Her instinct said something was wrong’
ANN Baczkowski died in 2014, just two years after being diagnosed with stage two breast cancer. She had not had a mammogram for several years and her family suspect she may have been overlooked because of the glitch.
As soon as her husband George, 73, heard the news that hundreds of women had been affected by the NHS error, he realised his wife was probably one of them.
‘She fitted the right age and the right profile to be among those they now say died needlessly,’ the retired airline pilot said. ‘She was a clever woman and her instinct told her something was not right. ‘She asked her doctor for a scan but he insisted that she did not need one. But two years later, when her condition worsened, she went back – and this time was sent straight to the Norfolk and Norwich Hospital for a scan. ‘She had a mastectomy but by then the cancer had spread to her shoulder and lymph gland.’ Polish- born Mr Baczkowski, speaking at his home in Swardeston, near Norwich, said: ‘I don’t blame anyone for her death but I do want answers and accountability... it was at a time of austerity when cuts were being made to things like the health service.’
Daughter Helen, a conservationist, told the BBC: ‘My mum was 70 in 2010. She was diagnosed in 2012 and then died in 2014.
‘At the time she was diagnosed, both my father and I remember having conversations with her where she said, “Do you know what, I haven’t been called for screening for some time”.’
She added: ‘I think we will have to accept that we’ll never know. I guess at the end of the day, the important thing now is to help those women who are still alive who need screening.’
‘I’m so angry on behalf of so many women’
Helen Jarvis was diagnosed with breast cancer this year after her GP noticed she had not been screened for four years.
The 72- year- old has had to undergo two three-hour operations in successive days because the delay had allowed her tumour to grow out of control.
Mrs Jarvis, of Newton Pagnell, Milton Keynes, should have been screened last year, as she was entitled to a check-up in the year leading up to her 71st birthday.
When she contacted the dedicated NHS helpline yesterday, she was told she was among the women affected by the fiasco.
The pensioner went to see her doctor in February after discovering a lump on her left breast.
At first her GP seemed unconcerned and took action only after checking Mrs Jarvis’s records, which showed she was overdue a check-up. She was fast-tracked to Milton Keynes University Hospital and a month later scans indicated she required a mastectomy. But the tumour had become invasive, which it might not have been had she been diagnosed a year earlier.
‘I feel so angry on behalf of so many women,’ she told the Mail. ‘In particular those women who went on to have aggressive breast cancer and died. That is appalling.’
The former occupational therapist described her experience as a ‘difficult time’ after two gruelling operations in successive days in April. She is now making a slow but steady recovery.
‘I haven’t had any communication at all’
Rowena Herniman says she never received a letter for routine screening, and was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2016.
The 70-year-old, from Surbiton, told the BBC: ‘I haven’t had any communication at all to ask me to go for a mammogram.
‘When I went to my GP, he said, “have you had any requests?” I said, “no, I haven’t”, and he said, “Hmm, you should have done”.
‘That might well have saved my surgery, saved the NHS money – who’s to say?’