A question of control
Gil Goldthorpe was preparing to embark on the adventure of her lifetime – emigrating to Australia – when she tragically embarked on a very different journey to her intended one.
“The final stage of the emigration process is an extensive medical examination,” recalls Gil. “But a routine eye test had to be followed up by a visit to an opthalmologist which revealed I had retinopathy, a symptom of diabetes.” Unhappy with her potential diagnosis, Gil was sent for blood tests to establish whether she had diabetes. The tests resulted in an out-of-hours call from her doctor’s receptionist instructing her to go to Ward 24 at her local hospital the next day.
“My 10-year old son’s school was closed so I had to take him with me to the hospital,” says Gil. “When we finally found Ward 24 the sign over the door read chemotherapy. My legs turned to jelly and I thought that someone had made a huge mistake – why on earth would I be sent there for a diabetes diagnosis?”
After contacting a friend to take her son home, Gil was seen by a doctor who calmly told her she had cancer. Gil went into complete shock and told the doctor that he must have made a mistake as she didn’t feel ill and had been diagnosed with diabetes. “It was surreal, I couldn’t see or hear the doctor speaking and l felt as though I was being sucked down a tunnel with a small spot of light at the end.”
Gil was diagnosed with chronic myeloid leukaemia (CML) and she was told that, depending on her reaction to her treatment, she might have just weeks to live. “The first treatment made me feel very ill,” she explains. “The shock diagnosis and the toxicity of the drugs meant that I struggled with everyday life and the twice weekly visits to hospital. I was very angry because I had cancer and my Australian dream had been taken away. Why me?”
