New mum whose cancer was dismissed as breastfeeding pain is fundraising for lifesaving treatment after NHS tells her it’s now incurable
Louise Gleadell, 37, felt dizzy after her youngest son was born, but was told to stop thinking about it
A MUM-of-three with cancer has been forced to tell her young children she could die after doctors initially dismissed her symptoms as tiredness and breastfeeding pain.
Louise Gleadell, 37, from Leicester was eventually diagnosed with stage 2B cervical cancer in February last year, when her son Jude, with partner Matt Rawson, was just nine months old. She is also mum to Joseph, 12, and 10-year-old Mateo.
Although it was initially thought her chemotherapy and radiotherapy had been a success, late last year she was given the devastating news it had spread and was incurable.
Last month Louise was hospitalised for several weeks after suffering setbacks, and she is now .
She explained: "We are raising money to pay for experimental immunotherapy treatment in London which is the only option I have left to try and give me time, or a miracle.
"My children have always been aware that I have cancer but I've had to explain to them that it's very serious and there is a big chance I could die.
"Joe and Mateo are coping amazingly but my family is very close and supportive and they are just fantastic boys, Jude is too young to understand what is going on but continues to thrive.
"It's been a stressful time for all my family it really has been a roller coaster but everyone of them has been amazing."
Looking back, Louise - who has never missed a smear test - realises her symptoms began during her pregnancy with Jude.
She had an aching pelvis and at 36 weeks thought her waters had broken after a gush of fluid came out of her in bed.
At hospital she was reassured that hadn't happened, and she's since learnt clear fluid like she experienced is a cervical cancer symptom.
"It was probably when my little boy was about six months old that I started thinking something’s not right here," she explained.
"I had a strange dizziness that was there all the time and I started to get this ache in my pelvic area. It was becoming more persistent and gradually getting more painful."
Louise went to the doctor, but her concerns were dismissed.
"The doctors kept saying to me, ‘Oh it’s because you’re breastfeeding. Baby is waking up in the night, you’re not getting as much sleep,’" she said.
"Eventually they did blood tests and when I rang up to ask if they’d had the results they said it was all fine. They just said my calcium was a bit low.
"He said he could give me some medication for the dizziness, so I asked what was causing the dizziness. That’s what I wanted to know.
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"He said, ‘Oh well I don’t think we’ll ever get to the bottom of what’s causing it.’ He did say to me that maybe if I stopped thinking about the dizziness I’d stop feeling so dizzy.
"He’s also looked at my cervix several times and told me that looked normal when there was a great big tumour on it.”
Louise also had blood tests, and she was assured they were normal.
She got her own copy to check and although her iron levels were in the normal range it was only just.
On top of that, two indicators of inflammation and infection within the body were four times the highest average number.
She was referred for a scan but was in so much pain she decided to go for a private one as it would be quicker.
"I was in real agony and I felt awful. I said to close friends, ‘I think there is something serious wrong.’ I didn’t think it was cancer," she said.
Louise was given an urgent cancer referral after that scan, and at the results in February 2016 she was told she had cancer.
She immediately asked if she'd need a hysterectomy, but because she had lymph node involvement she needed radiotherapy and chemotherapy instead.
At this time Louise was supported by a who explained her treatment to her and also helped her get a wig because she would lose her hair.
One of the most helpful things the charity did for Louise was help her get a grant to help towards Jude's nursery fees, as she was advised to have help caring for him when she was being treated as it would be so hard on her.
Louise added: "Two weeks after I finished I started feeling a bit more normal. I knew I felt weak and tired when I was going through treatment, but I didn’t realise how actually awful I felt until I started feeling a little bit normal again."
Not long after she decided to take part in , which saw her covering 30 miles in 30 days for the charity.
"It’s easy when you’ve got children to put yourself to the back of the pile and not take that time out," she said.
"I’d felt so weak and physically drained when I was on treatment, it was like something had been taken away from me.
"It was mission impossible to unscrew the cap on a bottle of water.
"I saw that and thought I can do that – 30 miles over a month, it’s a mile a day. It was time for me."
Then in October 2016 came the news that Louise was most concerned about - her cancer had spread to her left sub clavicular lymph node and her original cervical tumour had only had a partial response to treatment.
"At that point I was told the cancer was now incurable and we would start a three-week course of radiotherapy to my neck the next option after that was chemo as a palliative measure to try and control and minimise the spread," she said.
Despite developing a tumour abscess, in January Louise was told it was responding exceptionally well to treatment.
She was stable and didn't need chemo straight away, so later in the month she travelled to a doctor in London to discuss options outside of NHS treatment.
However, the very next day she was hospitalised after having an arterial haemorrhage.
She was hospitalised but eventually allowed home, only to have to return two days later when she started bleeding again.
Louise needed 14 pints of blood and has now been told she can't have chemotherapy due to the bleeding risk. Surgery is also not an option for her.
"The bleeding is unpredictable and obviously presents a risk to life," she explained.
This is why she is fundraising for immunotherapy treatment, designed to boost the body's natural defences to fight cancer.
Within days of starting the campaign, Louise's family and friends had raised £50,000. They are now hoping to get to their £100,000 target.
You can donate at .