After experiencing symptoms for several months, Lyndsey Ainscough, a resident of Leigh in Greater Manchester, was given a serious stage three cancer diagnosis.
The 40-year-old didn’t seek assistance until she watched activist Dame Deborah “openly talking” about her symptoms on television in the weeks leading up to her death on June 28, 2022.
Dame Deborah, a former teacher who is now a journalist and podcast host, is credited with pushing a record number of individuals to get checked for colon cancer.
“I had been getting quite a lot of symptoms during the COVID lockdowns and had bleeding, weight loss, and fatigue,” Mrs. Ainscough, whose children are four, eight, and twelve years old, stated.
“I noticed Deborah James attempting to draw attention to her tale when she appeared on the news. One day, everything just clicked.
‘Those are the symptoms I’ve been having, maybe I have colon cancer,’ I stated to my husband.
You’re too young to get colon cancer, so don’t be ridiculous, he kind of dismissed it.
In June 2022, Mrs. Ainscough’s general practitioner ordered her directly for a colonoscopy to check the inside of her bowel; she called the results “shocking.”
“It did not enter my mind for one minute that it could be cancer,” she stated.