Jane Anderton was exposed to asbestos while working as a teacher. Jane was diagnosed with mesothelioma in 2012. She had an operation to remove the tumour, and currently has scans every three months.
Cancer caused by work claims the lives of 666,000 people a year worldwide.
Many employers and workers are unaware of the impact of carcinogenic exposures. IOSH’s No Time to Lose campaign aims to get the causes of occupational cancer more widely understood and help businesses take action.
Find out more and get free resources at
http://tinyurl.com/NoTimeToLose-website
http://tinyurl.com/NTTL-Jane-transcript
Transcript
My name’s Jane Anderton and I’m a retired teacher. I was diagnosed with mesothelioma in November 2012. Now, 15 years ago I used to be a very keen walker and I was always at the front of the group and then I found difficulty with my breathing and I ended up being at the back of the group, which was very disappointing, and I didn’t really understand what caused that. And then last August I had a number of chest infections and didn’t feel very well. It was discovered that I had fluid on my lung. I then had a biopsy and discovered that I had malignant mesothelioma, which was a terrible shock for me and for all of my family. The surgeon talked to us all together and explained that if I had radical surgery my average life expectancy would be 22 months, and if I simply had the fluid from my lung drained again, 11 months. And this was very, very difficult to come to terms with and we were all very shocked. It really has been very, very distressing and I had the radical surgery and I felt very ill after the surgery. I was unlucky and I had fevers and infection, and I was very sick, but more recently I’ve recovered from the surgery and luckily I have a sunny nature and I seem to be able to keep happy in between the scans. I have scans every three months to see whether the tumours have come back. It’s inevitable that they will come back, but I am trying to make the most of every day and most days I seem to be able to do that. I’ve taught in a number of schools and I’ve been told that the most likely place where I will have picked up this problem with asbestos, which has caused mesothelioma, will be in a school somewhere.
