Life-saving screening gives double success for Stoke-on-Trent couple

A Stoke-on-Trent couple are urging people to take up the offer of cancer screening services provided by University Hospitals of North Midlands after they were both diagnosed with cancer within four months of each other.  

Former University Hospitals of North Midlands (UHNM) health care assistant Kath Dean and her husband Michael Dean, a former West Midlands Ambulance Service driver, were diagnosed with lung and bowel cancer after cancer screening at UHNM detected abnormalities.

Michael, from Chell received his bowel screening test through his letter box in August 2021. After sending the kit back to be tested, he was promptly invited to attend a further test where a two and a half centimetre tumour was found in his bowel.

The 68-year-old said: “I had absolutely no symptoms. No blood in my poo and no change of bowel habits so it was a complete shock to hear the nurse say I had bowel cancer. That’s the importance of taking up your screening. I had no symptoms. If you don’t take up the opportunity, you are putting your life on the line.”

While Michael was being treated for his bowel cancer, his wife Kath, 65, was invited to attend a lung health check appointment due to her smoking history. After Kath’s lung check appointment from the UHNM Targeted Lung Health Check team, she was invited to attend a CT scan of her chest as part of the lung screening process. A suspicious area was seen in her lung and surgery was booked.

Kath said: “When I went down to theatre I thought, I’m wasting their time - I don’t have any symptoms; I don’t have lung cancer. However, the lung team told me I had an aggressive cancer and if I had not attended my lung screening I would have been dead in three months.”

Michael and Kath have both received treatment and have now been given the all clear and are encouraging anyone who is asked to come forward for screening to do so, so they too could potentially be diagnosed and treated before it’s too late.