{"id":230568,"date":"2025-10-21T18:46:16","date_gmt":"2025-10-21T18:46:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/230568\/"},"modified":"2025-10-21T18:46:16","modified_gmt":"2025-10-21T18:46:16","slug":"lung-cancer-diagnosis-felt-like-a-death-sentence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/230568\/","title":{"rendered":"Lung cancer diagnosis ‘felt like a death sentence’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Alastair FeeSouth of England health correspondent<\/p>\n

\"BBCBBC<\/p>\n

Nicky has been given a less than a 10% chance of surviving beyond three years<\/p>\n

A woman with stage three lung cancer is trying to fund private treatment after being told by the NHS it can only offer palliative care. <\/p>\n

Nicky, from Bournemouth, said it felt like “a death sentence” when she was diagnosed with the disease in February and told she had a less than a 10% chance of surviving beyond three years.<\/p>\n

She said a treatment that could improve her chances was available privately, but was not funded by the NHS and would cost tens of thousands of pounds.<\/p>\n

A Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson said it was trying “to fast-track access to promising treatments”.<\/p>\n

“It came as a huge shock, I’ve never smoked, I’m relatively young,” Nicky said.<\/p>\n

“I thought it could be something like tuberculosis or other serious things, not something where you’re basically given a death sentence.”<\/p>\n

For her stage three cancer, Nicky said care on the NHS was limited to a palliative treatment focused on giving relief from pain \u2013 but privately she has been told she has another option.<\/p>\n

She said: “There is a curative route and there are treatments available in combination with each other. <\/p>\n

“That combination is not funded through the NHS, but it gives me a much better chance of survival beyond five years.”<\/p>\n

\"Nicky<\/p>\n

Nicky said private care could cost more than \u00a380,000 and involve three treatments<\/p>\n

The care she wants privately involves three treatments – a type of radiotherapy, chemotherapy and a targeted chemotherapy pill.<\/p>\n

But she estimated the first round of that care would cost \u00a380,000, which the community around her in Bournemouth is helping to raise.<\/p>\n

Nicky and her friends plan to hold fundraising events in the weeks ahead, including a swimming challenge and dog walks. <\/p>\n

She said the prospect of finding care privately was a “glimmer of hope”.<\/p>\n

“It was just so heavy getting that diagnosis of basically ‘you are going to die, it’s just a matter of time’,” she said.<\/p>\n

“But now it’s ‘no you can live and beyond five years’, it’s incredible that there is this combination of treatments that I can get.”<\/p>\n

A Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson said: “We continue to invest significantly in cancer research through the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NICE), including studies investigating new treatments for lung cancer.<\/p>\n

“We work with our regulatory partners to fast-track access to promising treatments, and we are committed to delivering effective medicines to patients sooner while maintaining the highest safety standards.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Alastair FeeSouth of England health correspondent BBC Nicky has been given a less than a 10% chance of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":230569,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[64,63,137,500],"class_list":{"0":"post-230568","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-healthcare","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-health","11":"tag-healthcare"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230568","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=230568"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230568\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/230569"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=230568"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=230568"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=230568"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}