‘My partner saved my life as cancer I didn’t know I had crept toward my brain’

A North Staffordshire mum was saved from certain death when her cancer was caught just in time as it crept up her neck towards her brain.

Wolstanton care worker Berni Williams found a lump in her neck in and was urged to visit the doctors two weeks later by her partner, Nathan Beardmore, as it was still prominent.

The doctor “didn’t like” what he saw and sent Berni to the Royal Stoke hospital, where secondary was found – but medics were baffled when they could not find the primary source.

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The mum-of-one said: “The consultants were bewildered because they found a secondary cancer in my body but they couldn’t find a primary cancer. I was diagnosed with CUP – ‘Carcinoma of Unknown Primary’ – in 2011 after having tests. They found an adenocarcinoma [a secondary cancer of the glandular tissue which usually starts in one of the body’s major organs.]

“My surgeon told me the cancer was creeping up my neck and if it had reached my brain that would have been it for me. I had 46 lymph nodes removed from my neck and 26 of these were cancerous. I had to go intensive chemotherapy and radiotherapy treatments because the surgeon didn’t know where exactly the cancer was coming from. The chemo was called Cisplatin which is what Cancer Research UK helped to develop. I was told if I hadn’t had the treatment then I’d have died without a doubt.

Staffordshire’s first Cancer Research superstore on Castle Walk, Newcastle-under-Lyme was officially opened by cancer survivor Berni Williams.

Berni cuts the ribbon to open the store(Image: Pete Stonier / Stoke Sentinel)

“The radiotherapy had to be targeted so directly and accurately that I had to wear a moulded mask that covered me from my head to my shoulders. I’d lie on the table and I’d be pinned down to the table by the mask so that I couldn’t move because the radiotherapy had to be targeted in a very specific place.”