Cancer patient Debbie Potts was terrified of soaring costs, until a lesser known part of Macmillan’s work was able to help
The official Met Office analysis of winter 2021/22 was that it was, in general, “exceptionally mild”. In London, the coldest date was January 6 when the mercury dropped down overnight to -3.0 degrees celsius. For most people the chill was barely noted. For Debbie Potts, it became a matter of life and death that she can still feel in her bones.
The 55-year-old West Londoner has a head for dates. She remembers that she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer on August 4 2021. “It was the first anniversary of the founding of my business and my partner, Dan, and I had been due to fly to Sweden to see his family,” she says. “I wasn’t worried about the scan; as far as I knew it was just a routine thing, and they thought my symptoms were the onset of the menopause. I asked the doctor to talk me through it because I couldn’t wait for the report; we were due to fly at 7am the next morning. ‘I don’t think you’ll be going anywhere’, the doctor told me. And that was how it started.”
On September 1 Potts began chemotherapy. “Six cycles of chemotherapy, one cycle every three weeks, then surgery, either after three cycles or at the end after six cycles,” she explains. “We persevered. Things were all fine until late October when I developed two blood clots. One above the aortic valve in my heart, the other in my pelvic area. One had broken away and travelled down the femoral artery of my right leg.”
Blood clots aren’t uncommon for cancer patients. The cancer itself can stimulate the liver to produce proteins which cause blood to thicken in the veins. Chemotherapy and other cancer drugs can do the same. Finally, the immobility which many patients suffer after feeling totally wiped out by their treatment can be a risk factor.