Doctor told dying cancer girl she ‘just wanted to be a stick insect like all teens’
A TEENAGER died from stomach cancer after doctors dismissed her symptoms for five months because they thought she was trying to stay slim.
Georgia Marrison, 18, was in constant agony, struggled to hold down food and her weight plummeted.
But in visit after visit to the GP, as her mother pleaded with them to find out what was wrong, doctors dismissed her concerns. One even put her severe symptoms down to her being just a typical teenage girl ‘trying to look like a stick insect’.
Georgia was so distressed that she asked her family: ‘Why won’t anybody believe me?’ Eventually her mother, Joanne, took her to hospital, where she was diagnosed with a rare and aggressive form of stomach cancer. But the disease had spread to her eyes and ovaries, and she died two months later.
Mrs Marrison, 51, spoke of her daughter’s ordeal days after a major study found that GPs in Britain are far less likely than those in other Western countries to refer patients for urgent cancer tests. She says doctors ignored Georgia because they saw her as just a ‘silly little girl’.
‘One doctor said to her “Georgia you are looking very pale and I know what you 18-year-old girls are like for wanting to look like stick insects”,’ she said. ‘I was really taken aback because he hadn’t even spoken to her.’
Georgia, from Rotherham, began feeling run down and tired in May last year as she studied for her A-levels.
She noticed that one of her eyes was swelling up each morning and she was sick after eating. She attended a walkin centre in June where doctors diagnosed her with dietary anaemia and prescribed iron tablets. But her symptoms continued and despite half a dozen visits to a GP the cancer was not detected. Before one appointment with her doctor the teenager, who had lost two stone in weight, even collapsed on the surgery’s stairs.
Mrs Marrison, an admissions clerk, said: ‘ She couldn’t keep anything down. I know my children and it couldn’t have been further from the truth that she was trying to be a stick insect. She loved her food but was never overweight. She was healthy.’
Alarmed at watching her daughter ‘waste away before my eyes’, Mrs Marrison took Georgia to Northern General Hospital in Sheffield last September. Georgia, who had been due to begin studying at Sheffield University, where she had won a place to study English, was transferred to the Royal Hallamshire.
There, she was diagnosed with stomach cancer. She died on November 11. Mrs Marrison, who also has a 15year-old daughter, Alex, acknowledged that the aggressive nature of Georgia’s cancer meant it was unlikely she could have survived.
‘I realise that the outcome would have been the same but her suffering could have been less,’ she said. ‘The impression we got from the walk-in centre was that it looked to GPs that she was just a silly teenage girl who wanted to be thin.
‘If GPs are just going to ignore the warning signs because someone is 18, 19 or 20 then their actions are wrong.’
Sam Smith, head of nursing and clinical services at the Teenage Cancer Trust, said: ‘Sadly this story is not uncommon. One in four young people with cancer have to visit their GP four times or more before being referred to a specialist. We must be more vigilant with young people.’
A spokesman for Cancer Research said cases of stomach cancer in teenagers are ‘incredibly rare’. Statistics for 2008 to 2011 reveal that there were four cases per 100,000 aged 15 to 19.
Dr Robin Carlisle, deputy chief officer at NHS Rotherham Clinical Commissioning Group, said: ‘Our sympathies are with the family for their tragic loss. The CCG works closely with our GP practices and the walk-in- centre to review where lessons can be learnt to ensure we can provide the best care possible for all Rotherham patients.’
A major international study released this week revealed that delays in referrals for cancer tests directly affect survival rates in the UK.
Cancer patients in Britain die earlier than in Scandinavia, Australia and Canada – countries where GPs are up to five times more likely to send people for tests and X-rays.
‘GPs saw her as just a silly little girl’