Mum given weeks to live ‘savouring family times’ four years later

A mother sent home to die with terminal cancer is now in remission and enjoying life.

On Mother’s Day in 2019, Sarah Clarke left hospice care for home, having been told she only had six weeks to live. But in January this year, she was declared cancer-free and has told the Mirror that she is “just getting stronger and stronger”.

A Committee of MPs at Westminster is currently hearing evidence on access to palliative care, the role of medics in assisted suicide and eligibility criteria for such services amid pressure from pro-assisted suicide campaigners to remove legal protections for people like Sarah.

Hopeless

Within two years of her 2017 diagnosis, and at just 39 years of age, Sarah was told that her lung cancer had spread and there was nothing more that could be done to help her.

Returning home to spend her remaining weeks and days with her husband and two young children, Sarah said: “I was in complete disbelief.

“The life I had planned ahead of me with my family disappeared. The hardest thing was realising I wouldn’t see my kids grow up.”

‘Grateful’

Reflecting on Sarah’s remarkable recovery, her surgeon at Sheffield’s Northern General Hospital, Mr Saurabh Sinha, said: “I’ve never known metastatic lung cancer to be cured. It’s amazing she’s still here”.

Sarah, who in 2021 climbed Blencathra in the Lake District and has conquered Snowdon, explained: “I never thought I would be able to do anything like that again”.

She added: “I still take every day as it comes, but I am also grateful for every single moment I get to live. Now I am just savouring being able to do all the things with my family I never thought I would live to see.”