A County Durham mum-of-four has spoken of how smoking has led to brutal surgery to remove two parts of her lung and a kidney - and urged people to stop the habit.
Cathy Hunt, 58, said she also felt smoking - and the illnesses it brought had put her family through an ordeal that she hoped others might be spared from in future. Cathy, a county councillor from Crook, is part of a campaign urging people to kick smoking.
Speaking to ChronicleLive as she recovers just days on from having a cancerous kidney removed, she said her story should be a cautionary tale, and also railed against the business interest which market lethal drugs to the public.
She was diagnosed with cancer shortly before her 50th birthday. She said: "Two days before my 50th birthday I found out I had a tumour on my lung. You hear the word cancer and the first thing I thought was “how do I tell my girls?
"At first to be honest I didn't even feel unwell. The first time around, just before my 50th birthday, I wasn't feel that poorly, other than being really tired and having bad feet. I was backwards and forwards to the doctors. Just by chance really the locum doctor said 'I'll send you for a scan'.
"Within ten days, I was told I had cancer in my lung. But I went into hospital and had part of the lung removed, and I was cancer free for a while after that. For five years I was having regular check-ups.
"I had stopped smoking before the operation. One of the things that really scared me was the mortality rate. And they said to that if you don't smoke it increases your chances of recovery. So I had even put the initial operation back three weeks and said that was me, I'd stopped smoking.
"But a couple of years down the line I was on a night out and picked up a cigarette, it was back to square one."
Though she passed five years post-op and was given the all-clear, a freak incident where she caught a chest infection having had to rescue her dog from a river meant that medics discovered her cancer had returned, and the prognosis was bleak.
She said: "A nurse practitioner said with my history they just wanted to send me for a few scans. They said the x-ray showed something on the lung. That's when they told me there was lung cancer and also cancer in my kidney. I had the lung surgery.
"The initial diagnosis wasn't good at all. But it turned out some of the spots on my lung were the remnants of the infection. So in November last year they removed another bit of my lung."
Cathy has now had her kidney removed in the last week and is hoping this will mean she is cancer-free again. Her message for smokers is simple.
"It's really not worth it," she said. "And the more I go on, I get more upset and angry about this. It's a drug - you wouldn't put cocaine on the shelves so why do we do it [with cigarettes]? They're really harmful, really dangerous. And these companies get away with marketing and all of this.
"I will never smoke again. I see these as horrible disgusting things. For me it's that thing that you make so many excuses. I was stressed at work, but really I was stressed because I wanted a cigarette. You would be surprised at the things you won't buy so you can buy cigarettes instead. Now I think how on earth did I even afford it.
"The key is getting through the first, horrendous phase. About the first three weeks. If you get through that, you can get through. And know if you go back, you are going back to the beginning and those hard weeks. But if you do, it doesn't matter. If you do, you just have to try again."
Cathy sharing her story comes as a survey of smokers in the North East published by the Fresh campaign group and published today shows that 77% of people in our area regret ever starting to smoke.
Another North East woman, Sue Mountain, has also again shared her heartbreaking story of falling ill with smoking-related cancer to encourage people to quit. Sue, who has had laryngeal cancer, said: "My daughters’ thought they were going to lose their mam. To see your daughters go through hell because of something that you've done was so hard."
Ailsa Rutter, director of Fresh, said: "Cathy and Sue are incredibly brave and inspiring people. Their only hope is to prevent more families in our region from going through the worry and the pain from smoking that they went through. This campaign gives them and others like them a voice to share their lived experience.
“Their stories are personal, but they are also the story of so many families across the North East and the UK. Most people who smoke get addicted as children and try to quit many times. Sue and Cathy have suffered greatly because of tobacco but they are now living every day glad to have put smoking behind them."
To find out about support on offer to help you quit smoking, visit the regional quitting hub FreshQuit.co.uk for tips, advice and local services.
