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Story taken from ThisIsWiltshire.co.uk.
Grandmother Janet Hardingham, who has been told she has just months to live, is determined to make the most of her remaining time after winning £75,000 in compensation from the Royal United Hospital in Bath after it failed to treat her for cancer.
She was given the money after it was revealed doctors had spotted tell-tale signs of lung cancer more than three years ago, but these had not been treated.
Mrs Hardingham, 65, of Maunders Drive, Trowbridge, said that the hospital’s mistake makes her furious but she doesn’t want to waste her energy being upset.
“I’m furious, I get times when I get very very angry. I just want to do something to make the RUH stop and look at what they are doing. I don’t want this to happen to another family because it is very difficult for my family.
“You do cope, you have to cope. I have had plenty of tears about the whole thing but it’s exhausting.”
Mrs Hardingham has suffered a catalogue of heartbreaks in the past few years.
Her own health started to fail after the death of her daughter Sian, aged 26, from a brain tumour in 2004.
In June last year her husband, James, 60, died from heart failure.
Mrs Hardingham, who along with her husband had served on the old West Wiltshire District Council, says she only discovered by chance that doctors had spotted a shadow on her lung back in 2007.
She had been treated by the hospital since suffering a heart attack in 2004 just months after her daughter’s death.
In March 2009 she was rushed to hospital suffering from arrhythmia (heart palpitations).
She said: “I had inhaled a lot of vomit on the way to hospital and went into cardiac arrest en route. They managed to get me back and I was taken to intensive care where I stayed for four weeks on a ventilator. I wasn’t expected to live.
“I started to come round from this coma and I spent a further 10 weeks recovering and learning to walk again.”
Then days before she was due to go home, a doctor told her she had a shadow on her left lung and that she would need a bronchoscopy as it looked suspicious.
The grandmother-of-three was then shocked to be told by a junior doctor that the shadow had been picked up on an X-ray two years earlier.
“The radiographer had written on the report ‘patient should be dealt with antibiotics and an X-ray within six weeks’.” But this did not happen Still reeling from the news, she went home to be looked after by her elder daughter Helen Main, 40. Two days later on June 9, 2009 her husband died suddenly at their home from heart failure.
She said: “My husband hadn’t coped well throughout my illness and I think the stress didn’t help.”
A bronchoscopy confirmed Mrs Hardingham was suffering from cancer and it was inoperable.
She was given radiotherapy in November last year and was then told that she would only have a year to live.
“I’m determined to prove them absolutely wrong. I find it hard to accept because I feel better and better. I have gone the other way, I was really ill when I was diagnosed and I just keep feeling better whereas cancer patients usually start feeling worse.”
She decided to take legal action against the RUH and was helped by specialist solicitors, Devonshires, based in London.
In June the RUH paid her £75,000 compensation.
Liz Bryant who was working on behalf of Devonshires solicitors said: “There was a clinical negligence case regarding the Royal United Hospital in Bath. We did settle this case in June.
“It’s amazing that it was settled so quickly.”
Tim Craft, Medical Director at the RUH said: “We are sorry that Mrs Hardingham’s care did not meet the high standards we would expect to give, and that she is entitled to receive. We are in regular communication with Mrs Hardingham and have met with her to discuss her concerns.”
Another spokesman said the hospital could confirm that the NHS Litigation Authority had agreed a compensation settlement with Mrs Hardingham.
