A woman whose kidney cancer was diagnosed at the height of the pandemic and was left so traumatised she developed PTSD symptoms has turned full circle and is helping patients with their psychological health at the hospital where she was treated. Life was going brilliantly for recruiter Laura Wilkinson, 30, when the March 2020 lockdown hit, as she decided to move her long-term boyfriend, electronics technician Ashley Wilson, 27, into her home in Lancaster, Lancashire, only for him to propose the following day.
Her only niggle came in June when the urinary tract infections (UTIs) she had experienced back to back in 2018 returned, soon accompanied by a nagging pain in her left side, prompting her doctor to send her for scans – leading to a diagnosis of stage one chromophobe renal cell carcinoma within weeks.
Told it was a rare form of kidney cancer that forms in the cells lining the tubules of the organ Laura, who is now in remission, said: “I was extremely lucky. My doctors – right through from the GP to the hospital – were fantastic and my cancer was found early when it was stage one and the tumour measured just 3.5 cm.”
