Olivia Williams<\/a> will “never” be cancer-free.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
Olivia Williams will ‘never’ be cancer-free<\/p>\n
The 56-year-old actress – who is best known for her roles in ‘The Sixth Sense’ and Netflix hit ‘The Crown’ – was diagnosed with VIPoma, a very rare cancerous tumour found in her pancreas, in 2018 but had been complaining to medics for four years before that whilst doctors initially thought she had lupus or was perimeopausal. <\/p>\n
She told The Times: “I go in [for scans] like a puppy with this optimistic, bright face and then they give me bad news and it\u2019s like, oh my God, I fell for it again.<\/p>\n
“They\u2019ve found new metastases pretty well either just before Christmas or in the middle of a summer holiday. Then, for three years in a row, they started appearing too close to major blood vessels to zap. So there was a period when we were just sitting and watching them grow, which is a horrible feeling.<\/p>\n
“I go to a room in King\u2019s College hospital and people in hazmat suits come in with a lead box of a radioactive material, which they inject into me and I become radioactive.<\/p>\n
\n“It\u2019s supposed to buy me maybe a year, maybe two or three years, of freedom from treatment. In the best-case scenario it would have made [the metastases] disappear but that didn\u2019t happen.<\/p>\n
\n“If someone had f****** well diagnosed me in the four years I\u2019d been saying I was ill, when they told me I was menopausal or had irritable bowel syndrome or [was] crazy \u2014 I used that word advisedly because one doctor referred me for a psychiatric assessment \u2014 then one operation possibly could have cleared the whole thing and I could describe myself as cancer-free, which I cannot now ever be!”<\/p>\n
\nThe actress is now an ambassador for the London Marathon’s charity of the year Pancreatic Cancer UK and insisted that “change” is possible, but it is “too late” for her.<\/p>\n
\nShe said: “The average time from diagnosis to death is three months \u2014 and that figure has not improved in 50 \u00a0years.<\/p>\n
\n“It takes an average person with my cancer [a VIPoma cancer within the pancreas] 11 visits to the GP to be diagnosed. For me it was probably about 21 times.<\/p>\n
\n“Because it\u2019s so quick and so shocking, people tend to liken losing someone to this cancer to losing them in a car crash.<\/p>\n
\n“What could change that is early detection with a test that could be as simple as breathing into a bag at your GP. We\u2019re incredibly close, we just need to get it over the line.<\/p>\n
\n“It\u2019s too late for me, and for all these people who are running in the marathon who\u2019ve lost a parent or a friend, who could have been saved by a pancreatectomy [removal of the pancreas] if the cancer had been found before it spread.<\/p>\n
\n“This is where I get emotional but I\u2019m not looking for sympathy, I\u2019m looking for a cheap, early test.”<\/p>\n
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