Posted: 8-Feb-2006 << BACK
My dad was dying and we never knew Reproduced by permission of the Eastern Daily Press
26 January 2006
At 47, he had everything to live for. A successful business and a loving wife and family. Stuart Oliver was looking forward to retiring to Spain with his wife Pauline and soaking up the sunshine. When he complained of stomach troubles, they thought it was an ulcer. But a few weeks later he was dead, killed by a deadly disease he had become infected with in hospital nearly 20 years earlier, without his knowledge. Chris Bishop reports.
Kerry Oliver fights back the tears as she thumbs through the family album.
Her father Stuart and mother Pauline, who were married for 18 years, beam radiantly out of a snapshot. The worst thing is all the time, in all these pictures, my Dad was dying and we never knew, she said. We never knew until it was too late.
If Stuart Oliver was going to go down with anything, his family thought it would be an ulcer. His job took him from one major construction project to the next. Then in October, 2004, he began coughing up blood and feeling stomach pains.We really thought he'd got an ulcer,said Miss Oliver. He was driving about all the time, eating on the hoof. At first, the doctor prescribed him anti acid tablets. But Stuart was becoming worse by the day, feeling light-headed and unable to eat. On October 17, the doctor gave him different tablets and warned it could be cancer.
A fortnight later, Kerry Oliver telephoned the doctor, as her father's condition worsened. By that point, my dad had really gone downhill. He must have been losing a stone a week, she said. The doctor said if he was a betting man, he'd say cancer of the gut with secondary tumour to the liver. When I asked him how long, he said it could be weeks.I was in hysterics, I was thinking now I've got to go and tell my mum her husband has got weeks to live.
Cancer was formally diagnosed in late November. Then a biopsy of Stuart's liver confirmed the worst. Not even a transplant could save him.
Stuart had 17 pints of fluid drained off him on December 23. The following day, he was out of hospital, finishing his Christmas shopping and wrapping presents. On Christmas Day, one of the last family photographs shows him sitting at the head of the dinner table, looking gaunt and frail. Kerry Oliver bought her father a pair of braces, because he had lost so much weight his trousers would not stay up.
As Stuart's condition worsened, his nurse said he should be admitted to hospital. His family knew when the time came, he wanted to be with them at home. Stuart Oliver's last day on this earth was January 26, 2005.
We were with him when he died. It sounds odd but I feel privileged we were there with him as he left,said Miss Oliver. The day he died we gave him a shave, he sat in his chair by the window and the sun was shining on him. I was holding his hand, Mum was holding his other hand and my brother Andrew was by her side as he took his last breath. We told him we loved him, we'd look after mum, we didn't want to lose him but we knew it was time.
After the tears comes the anger for Kerry, Andrew and Pauline Oliver. I'm disgusted that the NHS has allowed this to happen. He wasn't given the chance to have treatment,said Miss Oliver. If he had been treated, there is every chance he might have survived.
In December, a Health Protection Agency said up to 200,000 people could have become infected. But Dr Helen Harris, the HPA's hepatitis C expert, said: Most individuals with chronic hepatitis C can be successfully treated, but the success of treatment relies on people coming forward for testing.
In a statement, the NHS said: "The lookback exercise, which was based on expert advice from the Advisory Committee on the Microbiological Safety of Blood and Tissue for Transplantation, started on 3 April 1995 with the aim of identifying and tracing patients, who had received blood before September 1991. Unfortunately there are however, likely to be some people who were impossible to trace - for example because of loss of records, movement of patients and death of patients".
The Department of Health is currently running an awareness campaign for health care professionals and the public.
This include raising awareness of groups that may have been at past risk of hepatitis C infection including recipients of blood transfusion before donor screening was introduced in September 1991, which will enable individuals to come forward for testing if this has not already occurred.
The NHS campaign was launched in December, as Stuart Oliver and his family were coming to terms with the fact he had just weeks to live.
Anyone who thinks they might be at risk of infection should contact their doctor or nurse or call the Hepatitis C Information Line on 0800 451 451 or visit www.hepc.nhs.uk .
The Hepatitis C Trust runs a helpline which is staffed by people who have or have had hepatitis 0870 200 1200
