Today, Caron Nolan is undergoing major surgery for advanced bladder cancer.
The mother of two from Bexley, Kent, is having her entire bladder and nearby lymph nodes removed, as well as her womb and fallopian tubes.
After the six-to-eight-hour operation, she will need to wear a urostomy bag — a pouch to collect urine as it drains from an opening in her abdomen.
Speaking to Good Health days before her surgery, Caron, 60, is nervous.
Yet along reading program with spelling and phonics Cary - NC state fear, the former fitness instructor is also experiencing another emotion: anger.
Anger that the NHS has let her down.
For six months, her symptoms were repeatedly dismissed as 'just an infection' by her GP — or, rather, GPs; she rarely spoke to the same doctor twice.
It was only after becoming desperately ill in February this year that Caron, who lives with her partner, learnt what was wrong — and only then because she'd gone to A&E.
She was diagnosed with squamous cell carcinoma of the bladder, an aggressive form of the disease resistant to chemotherapy.
Paul Garratt, 40, a charity worker, lives with wife Rachel, 35, a GP, in Saffron Walden, Essex.
He says: 'If I'd waited for my scan, I might not be here. Going to A&E that night saved my life'
'At first I felt numb as it was so hard to make sense of it,' she recalls. 'But as it sank in, I was almost shaking with anger.
'My GPs should have done something months ago.
I must have made ten appointments between last August, when my symptoms — needing the loo urgently several times a day and night — started, and early January when I began passing blood. Now the cancer has spread. I am terrified of what the future might bring.'
It is a shockingly common story.
Research published last week revealed more than a third of cancer cases in the UK are only diagnosed after the patient went to A&E with cancer-related symptoms. The UK figures are far higher than in other, comparable high-income countries such as Canada and Norway.
Furthermore, people who end up in A&E were less likely to survive, particularly if they have stomach, bowel, liver, pancreatic, lung or ovarian cancer, according to the study by the International Cancer Benchmarking Partnership and Cancer Research UK.
As these figures are pre-pandemic (the data are from 2012 to 2017), there is a real fear that the numbers will be even bleaker in the wake of the Covid restrictions on healthcare access.
Abigail Solieri, 33, an events director, lives with husband Chris, a digital marketing consultant, and their daughters - Arianna, six, Mya, three, Zara, one, and three-week-old Raya - in Herts.
She said: 'We call Arianna Wonder Woman because she's an absolute trouper despite what she's going through. But I'm angry that no one realised something was seriously wrong sooner. If the GP had referred us for blood tests or a scan the cancer might not have spread'
