A woman has told of how her indigestion and swallowing problems were actually signs of one of the deadliest cancers.
In April 2022, Cheryle Brandon, 51, began struggling with what she thought were the signs of acid reflux — when juices from the stomach travel back towards the throat.
The criminal law advisor visited her GP, who prescribed the common medication omeprazole, which reduces the amount of acid the stomach makes.
Ms Brandon, who hails from Surrey, said this worked fleetingly, but soon the problem came back — and with a vengeance.
By November, it had become difficult for her to ‘swallow meat’, which often resulted in choking episodes.
But she simply changed her diet to get around the problem, ditching meat and surviving on soft foods like ‘wheat biscuits, ice-cream and yoghurts’.
Eventually, a GP referred her for an endoscopy — a procedure whereby a flexible tube with a camera is inserted down the throat to look inside the stomach — which revealed the devastating truth.
Doctors found a 6cm tumour growing on her food pipe, medically known as the oesophagus, the tube that carries food from the mouth to the stomach.
In April 2022 Cheryle Brandon, 51, started experiencing issues like acid-reflux and pain swallowing food but was prescribed a course of antacid to deal with problem
She was given the gut-wrenching news that the cancer was inoperable, and she likely had just a few months to live.
‘As it was too close to my heart, they couldn’t operate. They were saying months,’ said Ms Brandon.
In February 2023, she began chemotherapy in the hopes it would help combat the cancer, but doctors warned her to ‘prepare for the worst’.
‘They were trying for curative. But with potential for palliative [care],’ she said.
‘I was told to get my orders and affairs in order. I was downloading my funeral songs.’
Ms Brandon also told of the gruelling toll the treatment had on her body.
‘When I started my journey, I was a size 16,’ she said. ‘But after being unable to eat properly, I had already dropped to a size 10.’
‘I’d lost so much weight, I needed to be fitted with a feeding tube.’
However, the real cause was deadly type of cancer that kills the majority of those diagnosed with it within 12 months
Now, she is sharing her experience to encourage others with similar symptoms to take them seriously and visit a doctor quickly.
‘If you are thinking, “hang on a minute, I’ve got a problem that’s not being taken seriously”, get your ass to a doctor and get an endoscopy now,’ she said.
Ms Brandon’s story comes as oesophageal cancer was named as one of the six ‘least survivable’ cancers, alongside brain and lung, according to researchers.
More than half of the some 9,300 patients diagnosed with oesophageal cancer every year will die within the first 12 months of their diagnosis.
Poor survival rates are thought to be due to cancers being discovered in later, harder to treat stages.
Speaking of her initial symptoms, Ms Brandon said: ‘It didn’t feel like anything too serious, more like I had swallowed too much or that feeling you can get when you eat too quickly.’
She also mistook the warning signs for a bad cold.
‘I had a chest infection and a sore throat simultaneously,’ she said. ‘So, you know, I just thought it was that. I hadn’t connected the dots at that time.’#
But in June a scan when Ms Brandon underwent that examined the progress of her cancer revealed some unexpected news.
‘I got a phone call from the oncology team and someone who I’d never spoken to before told me that the CT scan showed no signs of cancer,’ she said.
Ms Brandon was initially sceptical and even suspected the medic was looking at the wrong file, but they insisted the result was correct.
‘I also thought that because the CT scan had been checking a different part of my body, it might not have caught the whole oesophagus. But she said, “there’s no trace of trace of disease”‘.
While Ms Brandon will have to undergo six monthly checkups in the future, she has been told there is no trace of the disease that nearly killed her.
She added that her experience had given her a new outlook on life.
‘Cancer has taught me to be more humble and appreciative of life,’ she said.
Potential symptoms of oesophageal cancer include problems swallowing, nausea, heartburn or acid reflux and burping a lot.
Other possible signs include an ongoing cough, change in voice, loss of appetite, pain while swallowing, and rarely coughing up blood or black poo.
Antone with these symptoms, including unexpected wright loss and if you had heartburn for the majority of days over a three-week period is urged to contact their GP.
While such issues are unlikely to be oesophageal cancer, and instead caused by a different condition, people are urged to get checked because the earlier cancer is found the more treatable it is.