Tragically, a 35-year-old mother of three passed away a few days after receiving a liver cancer diagnosis because important symptoms were misinterpreted.
In January 2024, UK resident Sian Ashcroft was diagnosed with terminal cholangiocarcinoma (CCA), and she was given only a few months to live.
Anyone would have been shocked by the diagnosis, but Sian’s mother died only eighteen days later, leaving her family with little time to process the news.
Now that her own mother, Sue Dowling, has shared her daughter’s tale, the CCA charity AMMF has stated that, regrettably, Sian’s situation isn’t all that unusual.
When Sian attempted to donate blood in the spring of 2023 and was informed that she was anemic, she discovered she had health problems.
To combat it, she started taking iron supplements, but by August of that year, she started to feel a second warning sign: stomach pain. The mother initially believed she might have food sickness, but this is actually an indication of cholangiocarcinoma.
Sian was sent to the hospital for testing when the discomfort wouldn’t go away, and it was determined that she most likely had gallstones. However, she was later admitted for surgery to place a stent in her bile duct.
Sian was not diagnosed with CCA until two months after being informed that she had a liver lesion at a follow-up appointment in early November 2023.
“She had become increasingly poorly, with frequent visits to her GP and time spent in hospital, but her diagnosis came too late to save her.”
“Despite this, she remained incredibly positive, she never lost her sense of humour, she was exceptionally brave and, above all, she never stopped thinking about her family.”
Helen Morement, the CEO of AMMF, clarified that only around 21% of CCA cases are diagnosed at stage one or two, meaning that most diagnosis occur later.
“Often, patients don’t fit the profile of what many assume a liver cancer patient should look like,” Morement explained, adding that ‘people are dying because there is a lack of knowledge of what is available’.”
She continued, “If someone comes to a doctor with these unusual symptoms and they’re not clearing up they should run a liver test, which will pick up if there is something wrong.”
