Claire's Story

Claire Louise Allan

05/10/1985-17/08/2009

When Claire fell pregnant at the age of 22, she already had gorgeous Megan who she'd had when she was 18. This pregnancy was not planned but herself and her partner Mike soon adapted to the idea. From early on in the pregnancy she was suffering from water infections, or so we thought. She was constantly on antibiotics but was told that some women were prone to them.


At 32 weeks she started to bleed heavily. After seeing the midwife and examinations were done she was reassured that everything was fine with herself and the baby. The bleeding kept reoccurring but each time she was reassured that everything was fine. She had examinations and swabs and, again, everything was fine. Of course, she believed them, I mean, they are the experts.


When her labour did eventually start she was in labour for 3 days and was in so much pain. She kept going to the maternity unit and was always sent back home - "It's too early," they kept telling her, "You have a way to go yet." On the 3rd day they kept her in and helped the labour along, and eventually she gave birth to another gorgeous baby girl, Millie-May.


She was still having problems, though, and was still in a lot of pain and bleeding very heavily. So her GP referred her to a kidney specialist, who ran his tests and confirmed her kidneys were fine. But he said you do need to see a gynaecologist urgently - this was now 3 months later in June 2008! She went back to her GP the same day and told him, and he again would not do anything until he had spoken to the kidney specialist to confirm. 


After what seemed like hours of waiting she was to told to go to the emergency gynaecology ward, where they took one look at her and booked her in for emergency surgery the following morning.


This is when they found an 8cm tumour on her cervix.


How can you be examined all those times by midwives and doctors and miss this? They did a biopsy and we waited a week for the results. This was one of the worst weeks of our lives, but little did we know then that we were in for rollercoaster of a year ahead.


As we all sat there in this little room the consultant looked at us all one by one and there was a specialist nurse there. That’s when I knew it was bad news.


To be told your 22 year old daughter has cervical cancer is just devastating. It took a while to sink in, but I thought - isn’t cervical cancer one of the best cancers to treat?


Claire started 6 weeks of chemo and radiotherapy, then in September she had 16 hours of the internal therapy (Selectron). That was the worst part, but through it all she kept on going, she was always happy and smiling, she didn’t let it take over her life, and she was so brave and strong. In November she went for an MRI scan which showed that the tumour had shrunk but was still there, so they decided to try a hysterectomy. With it being so close to Christmas they booked her in for early January, and we were warned that there was a slight chance that the operation could not go ahead what with radiation damage. In the meantime they arranged for a PET scan to double check the cancer had not spread anywhere else. Again, another very long week waiting for results. For once good news - the scan was clear, the cancer was only in the one area, and the operation could go ahead.


We all enjoyed Christmas nice and relaxed and looking forward to a bright and happy future.


I went to stay with Claire while she went in hospital for her op, to help out with the girls so Mike could stay with her as long as possible. The day of the surgery came, Claire went to theatre, I went to school to pick Megan up.


I started to get these terrible pains in my stomach, I had this horrible feeling that something wasn’t right. Mike rang me then and said Claire was out of theatre and she was ok, she’d only been down about 3 hours - I thought that was quick. We’d only been home a few minutes when the hospital rang asking us to come down. Of course, we went into panic mode. When we got there a nurse was sitting with Claire. We were told that they couldn’t do the surgery and that Dr Todd would be coming to see us the following day at 1pm. I couldn’t control the tears, I always tried so hard not to cry in front of Claire. Claire then took my hand and said, "Don’t worry mum, I’ll be ok." I kept thinking to myself this is not fair, it's not right, it should be the other way round it should be me lying in that bed not my beautiful daughter!


When we saw Dr Todd the following day he told us that because of all the radiation damage things were too close together and he couldn’t remove anything without damaging her bowel and bladder, and he thought the only option now is to have a pelvic exenteration, which is where they remove all the organs from the pelvic area. This couldn't be done in Newcastle so she was referred to a Mr Chan in Birmingham who was part of a specialist team along with a Mr Wallace and Mr Fielding - they have been doing these operations for around 23 years. We all went along to meet Mr Chan and he explained the operation and Claire said she was happy to go ahead as this was her only choice - it was this or not be here this time next year. She had to try it for the sake of her little girls. Mr Chan had to meet with the other surgeons to see if they were willing to give her a chance, yet again another very long wait.

Eventually we were given a date - 27th February 2009. It was major surgery, she was in surgery all day. Mike and I sat and waited and waited until eventually she came out it was such a relief she was still here. I thought this is it - this is our 2nd chance. We can learn to live with bags for this and bags for that! Claire was in intensive care for a few days and after about 2 weeks she was back home just in time for Milly’s 1st birthday.


Claire had a few set backs over the following months as we expected, but slowly it looked like she was getting better.We all started to relax a bit and started to look forward to a future. We booked a holiday to Euro Disney for all of us as a treat and for something for Claire to focus on. She had always wanted to take the girls to Walt Disney in Florida but at the moment this was out of our league, so Euro it had to be. I had also bought her tickets for Take That for Christmas.


As months passed she was always complaining of pains at the top of her legs. She was told she had a blood clot - yet another problem. She was given treatment for this but it seemed to be taking forever to have any effect. Her leg was getting worse, it was so swollen, and then her other leg started to hurt as well. She eventually ended up not being able to walk at all. At the end of June we went to see Take That with Claire in a wheelchair - this wasn’t how we expected it to be. The next day she wasn’t too well at all, she was vomiting again - it was this horrible disgusting brown fluid and it smelt like excrement, my poor baby.

We got her home to Newcastle where later in the week she was admitted to hospital and they did another MRI scan. This showed up several problems. She needed to be transferred back to Birmingham for further tests.


It's now July. I stayed in Birmingham with her where they found that her kidneys weren’t functioning normally. They were under too much pressure so they put in stints so her urine could go directly into a bag on her sides rather than through her urostomy one, and this made her feel a little better. They needed to get her into theatre but her bloods were all over the place. It took nearly a week to get her into theatre, and there they found that some of their 'plumbing work' they did had gone wrong so she would need more surgery, but at that moment she wasn't well enough. Mr Fielding wanted another PET scan - just in case, he said! Claire asked the dreaded question - do you think the cancer is back? He had to be honest and say yes. YET AGAIN another very very long wait.


I could see Claire was getting worse each day and I should have realised then what was happening. Mike came down to stay with her while she had the scan and I came home just for the one night. Myself and Clive (my husband) went back the following day and sat around all day waiting for Mr Fielding. The only time Mike and Clive left the room to get a drink Mr Fielding walked in armed with another doctor and a nurse again - I know it's going to be bad news. Then he tells us my gorgeous daughter is going to die.


I feel sick, I am shaking, and all I can hear is Claire saying I don’t want to die what about my girls. She just kept repeating it over and over again. I wanted to tell her it will be okay just like she told me when they couldn’t do the first operation, but I couldn’t - my baby, my first born, was going to die. She had so much to look forward to and now it's all been taken away from her. So cruelly taken away.


It was a rush then to get her home so she could spend whatever time she had left with her girls. We were due to go to Euro Disney the following week and we were waiting to the very last minute to cancel, just in case we could make it. As each day went by it was looking less and less likely that she would go, but all of a sudden the day before she said, "I’m going do it Mum for my girls." And she did. She pushed herself so hard. The flight was horrendous for her but she did it. She was so tired when we got there but she managed 2 days in the parks with her girls, but after 3 days she needed to go home - her legs were so swollen they looked like they were going to explode. She made the rest of us stay in Disney with the girls. That was one of the hardest things I have ever had to do in my life!


When we got back we went see if she could have any chemo. It wouldn’t cure her but it could prolong things, but the hospital said it was a no no, it would do her more harm than good and it could actually shorten her life not prolong it. She was having problems with one of her bags leaking so they arranged for her to be admitted the following Monday to get it sorted, and they were also going to get her pain under control. Again, each day I could see she was getting worse and worse. Eventually they agreed to leave the procedure, it would be too distressing for Claire.


On the Friday afternoon she took a turn for the worse. I was told it could be a matter of hours. I rang Mike to tell him to come up straight away. We had a meeting with the doctors and we all agreed to stop any medication apart from pain relief and to let nature take its course. She surprised us yet again, because Saturday morning she was still here and awake chatting away to us. We had a lovely weekend with her, and on the Sunday she was so awake and taking the mick out of me. She saw her girls, and Sunday night we had a Chinese take away. We were all there, Sam and Aaron (Claire's sister and brother), Mike, myself and Clive. They were all playing on the Wii console and Claire was having a good laugh at them all.


It was about 11pm and everyone went. There was just the 3 of us. Claire started to get restless, she didn’t want to lie down, she kept asking us to sit her up, and this went on every hour or so during the night. It was early morning when I realised what was happening. She was dying and she was fighting it so hard. She didn’t want to go, she was so scared you could see the fear in her face. We all agreed to up her painkillers so she was sedated, as it was too distressing for her. Claire passed away at 6.25pm on 17th August 2009 with all her loving family around her.


I am telling this story to show how important it is to have a smear, and that the under 25’s should get the chance to have one. If Claire had been given a smear after her first baby in 2003 as part of her 6-weekly post natal she would still be here now, as that would have shown something abnormal. I know Claire asked her GP for one and he kept telling her not to worry about that, you are too young. Yes, too young for a smear but not too young to get cervical cancer!