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A university professor died of lung cancer after doctors repeatedly dismissed her year-long illness as "purely psychological".
Lisa Smirl, 37, saw three different doctors after she began experiencing a range of symptoms including shortness of breath, wheezing and pain in her arm over the course of a year. But they were all dismissed as anxiety and depression.
By the time the cancer was finally diagnosed it had spread into her brain, bones and liver and was terminal.
In a blog written during her treatment, Cambridge-educated Dr Smirl wrote: "How is it possible that a 36-year-old, health [obsessed] conscious, occasionally social smoking, middle class, fianc?e of a doctor can develop metastatic lung cancer unnoticed. How?!?"
"What the consultant told us was that not only was it the c-word, but that it was everywhere. My brain, my bones, my liver."
But despite the terrible shock of the diagnosis, Dr Smirl, who was married to a medical doctor and lived in Leeds and Brighton while she worked at the University of Sussex teaching Global Studies, said it was also a "huge relief" to know there were "objective, physical reasons" behind her illness.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/h...-dismiss-illness-as-purely-psychological.html
Lisa Smirl, 37, saw three different doctors after she began experiencing a range of symptoms including shortness of breath, wheezing and pain in her arm over the course of a year. But they were all dismissed as anxiety and depression.
By the time the cancer was finally diagnosed it had spread into her brain, bones and liver and was terminal.
In a blog written during her treatment, Cambridge-educated Dr Smirl wrote: "How is it possible that a 36-year-old, health [obsessed] conscious, occasionally social smoking, middle class, fianc?e of a doctor can develop metastatic lung cancer unnoticed. How?!?"
"What the consultant told us was that not only was it the c-word, but that it was everywhere. My brain, my bones, my liver."
But despite the terrible shock of the diagnosis, Dr Smirl, who was married to a medical doctor and lived in Leeds and Brighton while she worked at the University of Sussex teaching Global Studies, said it was also a "huge relief" to know there were "objective, physical reasons" behind her illness.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/h...-dismiss-illness-as-purely-psychological.html