Christine Lucey died from cervical cancer. She was 40. Only when her husband went undercover to investigate the hospital blunders that killed her did the full horror come to light.

Reproduced by kind permission of the

BY JANE WARREN

On Donald Lucey's living room carpet, piles of medical documentation are arranged in neat skyscrapers. When his late wife Christine's cervical cancer was diagnosed, Don admits he wasn't certain exactly what a cervix was. But today, as we sip tea, he gives me a deft appraisal of current developments in smear testing, effortlessly juggling medical terms and pulling out pages from the skyscrapers to back up his statements.

Three years ago, when he and his daughter Rebecca received an out of court settlement of £420,000 — the highest payout made for medical negligence leading to the loss of a wife and mother — Don understood only that her doctors had misread a number of cervical smear tests; tests that, had they been correctly interpreted in 1986, would have given her a 95 per cent chance of survival, according to the expert witnesses assembled for the High Court hearing.

After such a distressing and protracted legal process, most people in Don's position would have banked the award and tried to put such tragic events behind them.

Not Donald Lucey. He couldn't let the matter rest. He wanted to pay tribute to Christine and to do something for other women, to warn them about the dangers of always believing the doctors. He also wanted catharsis. So many years had been taken up caring for his wife while raising Rebecca, now 13, then fighting for Justice, that he had had little opportunity to work through his own loss,

"I couldn't rest," he says. "I wanted to investigate the investigators and discover for myself what went wrong."

 

He set about his research in a remarkable way. Don, 49, is a former member of the Parachute Regiment. He also spent three years in the SAS, before working on police security operations as a close protection officer for politicians including Ted Heath and Tom King. He is now a part-time bodyguard.

Posing as a postgraduate medical student with the Open University, Donald went "undercover" at the medical research library in one of the hospitals where Christine was treated.

He shows me his hospital library pass application on which he gives his subject as "research into oncology". Using doctors' notes taken during nearly two decades of Christine's flawed care, Don set about examining them in microscopic detail using "detective work".

He learned to interpret medical parlance. He downloaded "reams" from the Internet and had the support of both the expert witnesses used in the High Court action, who agreed to allow their testimony to be used in the dignified but explosive book about his wife's illness that he has written. He has even examined the original mis­read smear test notes.

After three years, he now understands the true extent of the medical ineptitude.

"With mounting horror, I discovered the sequence of blunders that led to her premature death," he says. "I'd thought it was just a few misread smears but it wasn't until I started writing the book that I realised just how many mistakes had been made."

Christine was an Army nurse and because she was treated at a military hospital the MoD was responsible for her care. Despite regular smear tests, her cancer was finally detected too late to save her life and she died at the age of 40.

Between 1977 and 1986 Christine had many smears taken but, unknown to the family, five were abnormal. It wasn't until 1992 when Christine, by then very ill with cancer, received a phone call from a friend who was also a nurse at the hospital. "She called to say that one of her smears might have been positive," explains Don.

"Christine then got in touch with a medical negligence lawyer and the smear was re-examined by an expert, along with the ones before it." The expert describes those five smears as showing "severe abnormalities".

But, as Don worked his way through decades of doctors' notes, it emerged that Christine had had classic symptoms of cervical cancer for years. Light bleeding is an indication of cervical cancer but her complaints about this were constantly overlooked.

After Rebecca's birth by emergency caesarean in January 1988, abnormalities were noticed in Christine's womb and the surgeon referred her to the colposcopy clinic to have part of her cervix removed for examination.

"But the gynaecologist said the doctor was jumping the gun and the problem was probably due to pressure from the baby's head. Two months later she was told everything was normal; bleeding was put down to her busy lifestyle or a hormonal imbalance brought about by breastfeeding or because part of her placenta had been stitched into the womb. Then, the final insult, when her cancer was finally confirmed, she was led to believe it was in the early stages."

But even after accurate diagnosis, the errors kept occurring. A CT scan was done on her heart, rather than her pelvis. "Then she was given an 'untrialled' radiotherapy cocktail." And in 1989, when she had surgery, the consultant gynaecologist was not skilled enough to remove the infected cervix and did not seek advice. The source of the cancer was left behind.

"I realise now how much Chris was going through. I'd gone back in time and was watching the surgeon. I was saying, 'Take out the source.' It was very intense."

Eventually, the cancer spread. Christine was in hospital for 14 months, underwent a hysterectomy and had colostomy and urostomy bags fitted. Her weight halved, she lost her hair and self-esteem. "She never blamed her doctors, she saw them as people who had made terrible mistakes," says Don.

"But, as the months went by, as I worked on my book, this awful chronology was building..."

Don is appalled by plans to cut regular cervical smear testing from three to five years, a situation that means that one mis-read smear could leave a woman harbouring cancer for up to 10 years without detection.

"I'm not trying to cause a panic but having studied the literature I have a strong conviction that women should have smear tests every year throughout their sexually active years."

He says that the NHS encourages women to trust in the screening program but points out that complete trust will only happen once misdiagnosis ceases. "To become complacent is to gamble with your life. Sometimes, I think that it was her trusting nature that killed Christine."

'The Woman Who Wouldn't Die', by Donald Lucey, will be published this summer by George Mann Publications, priced £8.99. To order a copy for £7.99 call 01793 851407 or e-mail DonLucey1180@aol.com

©2001 The Daily Express