Woman dies after cancer is ignored 30 times, family claims

Mother-of-four Jeannine Harvey died after doctors missed her advanced cervical cancer 30 times, her family claims.

First, her general practioner and then medics at two hospitals kept saying the 33-year-old was suffering conditions including anxiety, nerve pain and even a torn ligament.

By the time Harvey's cervical cancer was treated, the tumor had become infected and shattered her pelvic bone. She died shortly afterwards. Her sister Marie Donovan, 34, said at one point, Harvey begged on her knees for doctors to take the case more seriously.

“She barely slept for six months because of the pain," Donovan said. "It took two of us to lift her into the car to take her to hospital appointments, but no one there seemed to be able to see how bad she was."

Harvey, of Rowley Regis, West Midlands, first complained of pain last December. Ultrasound scans revealed a mass about 1½ inches wide on the left of her pelvis.

Six weeks later, Birmingham’s City Hospital told her it had vanished and had probably been a cyst that had burst.

A few days later, Harvey collapsed and was taken to A&E at Sandwell Hospital. Further tests failed to pinpoint the correct problem, Donovan said.

Harvey spent six weeks back in City Hospital waiting to be transferred for specialist treatment. Her family secretly filmed her on her hospital bed crying out in pain: “I’m dying.”

In June, the tumor was found again — and had doubled in size; Harvey died in July. The family is taking legal action.

Local NHS chiefs said an investigation had already been completed, and they would talk to the family.

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