I wasted two valuable years battling to get a diagnosis

WHEN Charlotte Harvey started suffering with breathing problems three years ago, she feared the worst.

Her mother Anita had died the year before, aged 66, with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis.

Miss Harvey, 46, naturally feared she had the same condition, but her doctors told her she had no need to worry.

‘They said I was too young, they said it was just stress, they even said it was not hereditary,’ she said. ‘I was fobbed off for two years.’

After a while, Miss Harvey was misdiagnosed with bronchiectasis – a much more mild condition which makes the lungs vulnerable to infection. Eventually she persuaded her GP to send her for a CT scan – but even then the hospital held on to the results for four months before she was told she had IPF last April.

Miss Harvey, of Wellingborough, Northamptonshire, said: ‘I was very, very angry. Most people live for no more than a few years and I had wasted two years battling to get diagnosed.’

She gave up her career as an operations manager, instead setting up a gift shop.

Miss Harvey also raises awareness of IPF and supports others with the condition.

And she travels with her partner, Alan Young, trying to ‘tick off her bucket list’ before she becomes too ill. ‘It is a tragedy but I need to make the most of my life while I have it,’ she said.