Six-figure sum for cancer widower
A man who lost his wife to lung cancer in August 2004 after doctors missed a tumour on an X-ray has been awarded a six-figure, out-of-court NHS settlement.
Stephen Clark, 50, said he spotted the cancerous tumour on an X-ray he was shown by his wife Fiona's consultant who told him the X-ray was two years old. Mrs Clark, who died aged 42, was advised than an abnormality on an earlier X-ray was "nothing substantial."
Mrs Clark, from Whitehaven, was referred to West Cumberland Hospital for the earlier X-ray in 2002 after suffering a persistent cough. Eventually in 2004, Mrs Clark, a training instructor at Haverigg Prison, started coughing blood. She visited her GP again and was referred for the second X-ray.
Mr Clark, a former engineer at Sellafield, said: "My wife's consultant, Mr Bernard, put an X-ray against the screen for us to look at. He asked me what I could see. I pointed out a clear kidney shaped shadow on the right lung. He said I was right and broke the devastating news that what we could see was a cancerous tumour.
"He then revealed that the X-ray we were looking at was not the one he had just taken, but the one which had been taken two years previously at West Cumberland Hospital. He said radiographers had missed the tumour that I had managed to identify."
In April 2004, Mrs Clark was admitted to hospital to have two thirds of her lung removed. She was reasonably well for a couple of weeks afterwards but then developed chest pains and began to deteriorate. She began radiotherapy in June but became increasingly frail.