Interview LC40

Age at interview: 72

Age at diagnosis: 49

Brief Outline: Diagnosed with lung cancer in 1979, followed by right pneumonectomy (right lung removed).

Background: Surgical appliance officer (retired), married, 2 children.

Explains that she did not want a nurse to call because she wanted to forget she had had cancer.

Did you get support from other people when you got home?

No.

There was a nurse, you said a nurse called?

Well the nurse came but she was very nice but I didn't want her.

Didn't you?

No, no I told her nicely, you know she came and she said, as I told you she said she'd be coming for a few weeks to see me, you know see how I was going on. And so I said, "Well why are you coming?" she said, "Because you've had cancer." I said "Yes but I've had cancer, but I haven't got cancer now," so I said "Do you mind if you don't come because I want to forget I've had cancer?"

Yes I can understand that.

And that was how I felt, I wasn't, I wasn't being, you know I wasn't being discourteous to her at all but that's just the way I wanted it to be, I'd had cancer, the cancer had gone and that's the way I wanted it, I wanted it just to go and that was that. And that's the way I've looked at it ever since.

Thinks more should be said about people who have survived lung cancer.

How do you feel when you see the advertisements on television about lung cancer?

I think they're good yeah I think they're good. The only one I don't like is where it says that she died two weeks after, I don't like that because I think if you've got lung cancer you've just been diagnosed with it and you see something like that and it says "Oh Colleen died," is it Colleen or Colette, "died two weeks after that," it's not helping you, it's very depressing. What you want, you want to go up. And it's like when you've had cancer you're up here but you can come down and it's like being on a seesaw. I mean John Wayne died when I was in hospital, he died with lung cancer the week I had my lung removed with cancer you know. But you don't, you don't want things like that you want, you want people to help you to come up, not go down there you know.

Yes get over it?

To get over it, you want to come up here, not be pushed down with it and told you're too, this lady died two weeks after this, God help her and God help her family, I feel very sorry but it's not helping people. And I do, I do, I've got a bee in my bonnet about it, I really have you know I think they should be, why don't they, why don't they put more publicity about, like publicity about people that have survived, that have come through it, why don't they do more? They do more about people that have died with it than people that are still living with it you know. And it annoys me, it does, it really gets me.