‘I cried thinking how to tell my kids’: Doctors missed mum’s cancer for FIVE years then told her she had 18 months to live

BELINDA Gilfoyle, 46, lives in Kent with her husband Carl, 47, daughter Nadia, 18, and son Oliver, 10. She says:

"The pain felt like a long needle stabbing me in the ear.

It was so excruciating, I was often reduced to tears.

In 2008 it appeared out of nowhere, and within six months it was happening daily.

The doctor assured me it was nerve pain and gave me painkillers, but they didn’t make any difference.

Over the following years I went back to my GP and dentist and even saw a maxillofacial consultant, who specialised in face pain.

But each time I was told it was nothing to worry about and I’d just have to live with it.

Life felt hopeless – I’d gone from being an outgoing person to a shadow of myself.

My husband Carl, a body guard for a security company, was a great support, but I knew it was hard for him.

In 2013, five years after the pain had started, I found a lump the size of a grape in my neck.

Scared of being fobbed off by my GP, I made an appointment at a private hospital so I could get it seen straight away.

It cost £500, and the following day I had a biopsy.

A week later I returned for the results.

The consultant told me the pain had been caused by oral cancer that developed into a rare form of head and neck cancer called adenoid cystic carcinoma.
It was a slow-growing tumour, which was why it was missed by doctors for so long.

Then he gently told me that I had 18 months left to live.

I felt as if the air had been punched out of me.

The consultant explained chemotherapy probably wouldn’t help, and surgery would ‘mutilate’ me and potentially destroy my face.

I burst into tears, thinking of how I’d break the news to my children.