Tracey Morris, who now only has one lung, wants to raise awareness
Tracey Morris On Lung Cancer Awareness
An East Yorkshire woman is using Lung Cancer Awareness Month this November to highlight the “sneaky” disease that has left her living with one lung. Tracey Morris, 64, of Bridlington, is urging people to see their GP if they are displaying symptoms that are unusual for them.
Tracey said: “Last Christmas, I thought I just had a bad cold. I was coughing a lot, and I had chest pain.
“My friends told me I should see my GP, but I thought I should just soldier on. When I ended up so ill that I had to go to hospital I found out it wasn’t a cold; I had stage two lung cancer.
“If you’ve been coughing for three weeks or more, please don’t assume it’s a cold, flu or Covid. Go see your GP. It can make a difference, and it could save your life.”
Tracey is helping Humber and North Yorkshire Cancer Alliance’s public awareness campaign by speaking about her own experiences to encourage other people to act. She said she was at first in denial when she was told she had lung cancer, convincing herself “it must be something else”.
“I was convinced my lung doctor had got it wrong, someone who sees this kind of thing every day and me who knows nothing about it at all.” Tracey made the decision to have a pneumonectomy (full lung removal) after her surgeon said he was “aiming for a cure”.
She said: “It’s a sneaky, sneaky disease, let me tell you. I had no symptoms beforehand apart from a bit of indigestion.
“I wasn’t coughing up blood; I wasn’t breathless. In fact, on the day I went into hospital, I ran up two flights of stairs at home, and back down again, to get something I was taking with me.
“You can understand why people miss it. Why so many people are diagnosed late on.
“It doesn’t have to produce symptoms. The thing is, you know your body best; people should take note of those little, little changes.”
Tracey thought she had caught a bad cold last Christmas, which led to her having two or three days off work – “I never have days off”. She said: “A lot of people were going to the doctors then and asking for antibiotics and they [the GPs] were saying to them, go home and take paracetamol, but I wasn’t going to go and bother them.
“It seemed to ease off over Christmas but then came back with a vengeance.” Tracey took herself to the “walk-in” urgent treatment centre at Bridlington after a night when she suffered “excruciating pain” in her chest.
She ended up being treated for pneumonia and was found to have a collapsed lung. A bronchoscopy procedure revealed a 4.4cm tumour and Tracey had to have her left lung removed.
She recently finished chemotherapy treatment and is soon to see her oncologist to discuss immunotherapy. “I have my good days and bad days,” she said. “I do get out of breath and it’s easy to overdo things.
“I am so lucky, I am here to tell my story, and I am so grateful for that.” Tracey said: “Part of what I want to get across is that so many people associate lung cancer with smoking.
“I would say, don’t smoke; if you can stop, stop; if you’ve never smoked, don’t start. But if you have a pair of lungs, you can get lung cancer.”