Doctors miss lung cancer that killed lecturer at 37
A LEADING academic who died of lung cancer aged just 37 accused her doctors of failing her in a poignant blog written just before her death.
Cambridge-educated university lecturer Lisa Smirl said three separate GPs dismissed her symptoms as “purely psychological”.
Dr Smirl, a medical doctor’s wife who taught at Sussex university, in Brighton, died last month after the disease had spread throughout her body.
But in the blog charting her illness, the Canadian-born academic told how doctors said she was suffering from “anxiety and/or depression”.
The consultant told us that not only was it the c-word, but that it was everywhere
She added: “And while I was both anxious and depressed, this was due to the increasingly disabling symptoms that my doctor kept insisting were purely psychological.”
The global studies specialist said of her illness: “How is it possible that a 36-year-old, health [obsessed] conscious, occasionally social smoking, middle class, fiancee 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.”
Dr Smirl began her online diary when the symptoms started just over two years ago.
She wrote: “Still, despite my pleas, and a dramatic weight loss, none of my doctors (and I saw three different family practitioners) would consider my symptoms in conjunction with one another.
“I can’t prove it, but I have no doubt in my own mind that my misdiagnosis was in large part due to the fact that I was a middle-aged female and that my male doctors were preconceived towards a psychological rather than a physiological diagnosis.”
West Sussex Primary Care Trust and Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals Trust were unable to confirm that they were involved with Lisa’s treatment.