Lincolnshire widower angry that wife couldn’t get GP appointment in Stickney - and feels the NHS ‘failed her’ before she died of cancer
When Laura Barlow received her full cancer diagnosis, she wasn’t even told how long she had left. She was simply told there was ‘nothing the doctors could do’, and she should ‘go home and spend time with her kids’.
For months the Lincolnshire 33-year-old had been living in pain, but believed it was related to an endometriosis diagnosis she’d received during a five-minute phone call with her GP, according to her husband. By the time her doctors referred her to a cancer clinic three months later, there was nothing they could do, writes Charlotte Hall, Local Democracy Reporter.
Laura died at her home three days after her final diagnosis, leaving three children aged nine, two and one and a bereaved husband, Mike, who she’d met while both of them were working in the very hospital that her husband claims ‘failed her’.
Mike was devastated by the loss of his beloved wife – but he was also angry. Mike believes if Laura had been seen by her GP in person, she would have been diagnosed sooner.
“We could have had more time with my wife. Not three days,” he told the Manchester Evening News. “They failed her.”
The widowed dad, who hails from Manchester and works as a porter for Boston’s Pilgrim Hospital, is now asking the government to mandate in-person doctor’s appointments. An online petition, started by a family friend, has already gathered more than 14,000 signatures.
“She was never given the opportunity to see them face to face,” Mike said. “If she had, they would have seen how much pain she was in. They would have sent her straight to A&E or asked for her to have bloods and scans done.
“I’m not saying she might have lived. But could we have had more time with her? Could they have started her on chemo so we could have six more months? We’ll never know. We’ve had that opportunity taken away from us.”
According to Mike, Laura first became seriously ill in October 2023, with pain in her abdominal region and blood in her stool. He remembers a brief phone call with her GP at Stickney Surgery resulted in the endometriosis diagnosis.
She was prescribed pain medication, which kept her going until mid-December, when she collapsed at her work as a housekeeper at the Pilgrim.
“I picked her up and took her straight to the doctors,” Mike recalled. “We were sent to urgent care. She got poorlier and poorlier and was given morphine.
“By the time they called her name, the morphine had kicked in and she was in less pain. And the doctor [who knew about her endometriosis diagnosis] told her ‘there’s no point in seeing you because your [GP] is dealing with you’. That was it.”
Laura’s condition continued to deteriorate but it took another visit to A&E and several more weeks of waiting before doctors discovered lesions on her liver through a CT scan in early January, according to a medical transcript.
But it wasn’t until mid January that doctors started to suspect cancer. Laura’s final prognosis only arrived on February 2, more than three months after she first complained of the pain.
Mike didn’t have the words to describe how difficult it was to lose his wife but agreed it was ‘incredibly difficult’.
The family spent Laura’s last days on a long-awaited holiday to Centre Parcs, but the mum-of-three’s condition turned on their way home.
“When we got her in, I lay down on the bed next to her. We both fell asleep like that, and then her sister woke me up a few hours later and told me she was gone,” Mike said.
“What was the worst for me was the kids coming down the next day and finding mum’s not there. I had to tell the nine-year-old her mum had gone up in the sky with the angels. She just broke down.”
The family travels to Gorton, Manchester to visit Laura’s grave twice a month and have special traditions to ‘keep her memory alive’. But ‘getting the answers’ is what has kept Mike going the most since his wife’s death.
“I just want someone to put their hands up and say ‘yes, we failed your wife. We will make sure this never happens to anyone else,” he said, adding that he’d had ‘nothing but excuses’ from Pilgrim’s Hospital and Stickney Surgery.
The lack of an inquest means Mike isn’t certain what cancer Laura had. He says he ‘hadn’t been aware’ that an inquest was an option but that he made multiple complaints to the chief executive of the hospital.
When contacted by the MEN, a spokesman for the United Lincolnshire Hospitals Trust, who run both Pilgrim Hospital and Stickney Surgery, said: “We would again like to offer our deepest condolences to Laura’s family.
“We are unable to comment on individual cases, but will continue to speak to the family about their concerns as appropriate.”
But Mike is determined to bring about change and claims he has had messages of support from ‘thousands of people with similar stories’ since sharing the petition.
“The government needs to know,” he said. “I’ve had so many messages of people whose loved ones were misdiagnosed over the phone. It’s got to stop. People have died.”
You can sign the family’s petition here.
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