Tributes paid to mum who tragically died after being told back pain was trapped nerve
10.04.2022 - 22:15
/ dailyrecord.co.uk
A mum-of-two tragically died of incurable stage four cancer just mere months after she was told her back pain was because of a 'trapped nerve'.
Helen Etheridge, 68, first complained of a pain in her back in October 2020 which was put down as nothing more than a trapped nerve.
Helen, who lived in Crosby, said that the pain was because of "old age", Liverpool Echo reports.
However, during a trip to visit her sister in Hull in late January 2021, Helen became very unwell with what medics thought was a pulmonary embolism as she was coughing up blood. Just days later she was diagnosed with stage four lung cancer.
Helen's son Alex said that hearing his mum had cancer felt like a "punch to the stomach". Alex said that his mum had previously been diagnosed with breast cancer a number of years before but it had been treated.
Alex said the family "clung onto the hope" Helen was going to be okay as she'd successfully been treated before but sadly by the time doctors diagnosed her lung cancer it had spread to other parts of her body including her brain.
Alex, 33, said: "There were no real symptoms apart from her back pain which was getting worse and worse. I sometimes look back and think maybe there were more signs but the doctors said it was just a trapped nerve so we thought she was fine.
"She just said the back pain was because she was old. It really escalated quickly after she was diagnosed though. It spread to the brain and you could tell she was very confused.
"When she was diagnosed it felt like a punch in the stomach. With cancer you try and cling onto a bit of hope but sadly we didn't have that."
Alex and his sister Jess made the journey from Liverpool to Hull everyday to see their mum in the hospital but after seeing how