A deeply personal account by cancer survivor and Daily Mail leader writer Neil Darbyshire

Michael was an antiques dealer from East Sussex, with whom I once shared an intimate six-hour conversation

A deeply personal account by cancer survivor and Daily Mail leader writer Neil Darbyshire

Michael was an antiques dealer from East Sussex, with whom I once shared an intimate six-hour conversation while hooked up to a chemotherapy drip in the Royal Marsden hospital.

The difference between us was that he was going to die whereas I, though I didn’t know it then, was going to live.

We were roughly the same age, had the same condition (Stage IV bowel cancer with liver metastasis) and had originally gone to our respective GPs with the same symptoms.

But while mine sent me straight to hospital for a colonoscopy and scan, his did not. For almost a year Michael’s GP insisted that he had some sort of irritable bowel condition rather than cancer.

That mistake probably cost him his life. While it transpired that my secondary was just a single small tumour on the liver, his had grown and spread so widely it had become inoperable.

I lived, he died: Daily Mail leader writer Neil Darbyshire shared his personal account of overcoming cancer

Our chance meeting came back to me yesterday, on reading that GP cancer referrals have plummeted since the coronavirus outbreak – with an estimated 2,300 cancers being missed every week. This is bleak news indeed.

UK survival rates are already poor in comparison with developed nations. How depressing that so many more lives will be cut short as collateral damage of Covid-19.

The GP is the gatekeeper to cancer treatment. And it is an awesome responsibility, as Michael’s case so tragically demonstrates.

However brilliant the specialists, if initial diagnosis is too late, the best they can do is to prolong life rather than administer a cure.

I was first seen at the local surgery by a young locum, to whom I shall be forever grateful.

I told him my symptoms – dark streaks of blood in the stools – and that I had been having them for some months. I tried to make light of it but he was in no mood for levity.

Neil Darbyshire met Michael at the Royal Marsden Hospital. They have two sites, one in Belmont (pictured) near Sutton Hospital and another in Kingston and Chelsea

Why hadn’t I come sooner? Didn’t I realise that if there was something seriously wrong, every day counts? And no, I couldn’t go on a pre-planned golfing trip to Spain before seeing a specialist.

There’s something particularly humbling about being admonished for your pathetic failings by someone 20 years your junior. Especially when they’re right.

That evening I was at Kingston hospital for a colonoscopy, which revealed something they obviously didn’t like. An appointment with the colorectal specialist was made on the spot.

Then, the words everyone dreads. ‘You have a cancerous growth … and it has spread.’

In fact, the doctors don’t put it that brutally. Not at first anyway. In the early consultations cancer wasn’t even mentioned.

First we were talking about an obstruction, then a growth. But finally the hard truth. I had a malignant tumour – and one which had spread from lower bowel to liver.

It goes without saying that this is not cheering news. However, it can range in scale from merely bad to very, very bad indeed.

The difference – which is the whole point here – is how long it’s been lying there undetected. If it’s a fairly recent transmission, there may be just a single secondary tumour.

This is serious enough, but it means that the affected area of the liver can often simply be sliced off with little or no long-term damage.

But any delay in diagnosis and treatment and you really are up against the odds.

The single tumour develops first into clusters on the liver, which become far more difficult to excise, then – if still unchecked – eats into other organs.

Mercifully, my single tumour meant I had a decent chance of pulling through. It still wasn’t great. In those days (2007/8), my theoretical life expectancy was put at about two years.

However the doctors were bullish. ‘Serious, but potentially curable,’ was the mantra I was encouraged to chant to myself through the dark days of highly aggressive chemo.

And – with the help of the then new tumour-shrinking drug Avastin and some fairly major surgery – curable it turned out to be.

Neil's operation was the first simultaneous liver and bowel section staged at Kingston hospital (pictured)

Incidentally, mine was the first simultaneous liver and bowel section staged at Kingston hospital.

The liver man first sliced off his bit then gave way to the colorectal surgeon – a great man of Cumbria named Adrian Fawcett – to do the rest.

Because it was such an unusual joint operation, the theatre was awash with medical students who’d come to watch and learn. As I was about to be anaesthetised one wag said: ‘Don’t worry. They won’t want to mess up in front of such a big audience.’

So here I am 12 or so years later and apart from a few minor hangovers from chemo and surgery in fairly reasonable nick. But it was a close run thing. A few more weeks before diagnosis, and it may well have been very different.

For all the awe-inspiring expertise of Mr Fawcett, oncologist Chris Jackson and the other specialists, the urgency of that first GP consultation increased my survival chances immeasurably.

It still makes me sad (and often angry) that Michael wasn’t given the same break.

Latest figures suggest there are nearly 1,800 excess deaths every week from causes other than coronavirus

In all the Covid cacophony, let’s not forget there are thousands of Michaels out there – relying on the NHS to keep them alive.

And it’s not only cancer patients who are being neglected. Latest figures suggest there are nearly 1,800 excess deaths every week from causes other than coronavirus.

There are many potential reasons. Patients not prepared to go to hospital for fear of catching the virus, or not wanting to trouble the already overburdened NHS.

Some GP services not functioning as they might, ambulance waiting times are lengthening to dangerous levels, and hospitals taking specialists away from their own disciplines to fight Covid.

It’s entirely understandable that the focus of the NHS is fixed on beating this infection. But it is a temporary phenomenon.

If those with cancer and other chronic life-threatening diseases don’t get the treatment they need now, its legacy will be a casualty list stretching out for years to come.

It we aren’t careful, it may end up being greater than the death toll from the virus itself.