Lois Walker was told she had health anxiety when she experienced severe stomach pains
A woman who was diagnosed with terminal cancer when she went into hospital to give birth has said doctors did not listen to her health worries.

Lois Walker, 37, from Barnsley, had stomach pain for 12 months but doctors told her it was caused by anxiety.

It wasn’t until her son Ray was born by Caesarean section in 2021 that she was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer.

She has written a letter of complaint to her GP practice, which declined to comment due to patient confidentiality.

Barnsley Hospital also said it could not comment until a formal complaint had been made.

Ms Walker told the BBC she repeatedly visited doctors at Dove Valley Practice in Worsbrough and Barnsley Hospital, but said she was told she may have irritable bowel syndrome or hypochondria.
She said: “I don’t know what else I could have done. It was like nobody wanted to listen.

“I said to them ‘I feel like I’m going to die’.

“I wanted to be taken seriously. There was something seriously wrong, I felt.

When Ms Walker went into the hospital for her son to be born by Caesarean last year, surgeons found cancer in her ovaries, the lining of her abdomen and lymph nodes.

She said: “My abdomen was so diseased, tumours everywhere. They said that it was like a bag of sand that had been opened and it has gone everywhere.”

Ms Walker, who has three children, said the diagnosis meant she worried about getting attached to her newborn son.

“It’s been really, really hard,” she said. “I didn’t want to get attached to him, but he is my ray of sunshine.

“My kids are my purpose. I want to concentrate on making memories. If love could save me, I would never die.”

‘Listen to your body’
Her partner Dale Wistow said: “This could have been caught earlier than it was.

“It’s just a bit sickening, especially with kids. We don’t know what the future is going to bring now.”

Ms Walker is now urging other people to listen to their body and ask for help when they feel unwell.

“If there is just one medic who reads this and thinks ‘we need to do better,’ that’s all I want,” she said.

“I would not want anybody to go through what I’m going through.”

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