Story told by Mimi McCord
Mimi and Mike met when Mimi was 19 and started dating when she was 20. Within six weeks of getting together they knew they were going to get married and wanted to grow old together. On the 8th September 1979 their very pretty wedding took place on a beautiful warm sunny day. They built a life together, started a family and made plans for their future.
Mimi recalls that Mike always complained of having heartburn and would suffer with symptoms three or four times a week, if not more. Over the counter medication like Rennie and other antacids became a regular purchase in the weekly shopping and Mike would take them constantly to alleviate his symptoms. Mimi said they thought very little of it.
It wasn’t until Saturday 10th August 2002, when Mike was eating a piece of toast and it started sticking, which gave him the hiccups, that he decided to take action and made an appointment to see his GP, telling Mimi that something didn’t feel right.
The GP, referred Mike for an endoscopy. Mimi remembers “he was taken down to the endoscopy unit and I was told it would take about 45 minutes. Within 20 minutes he was back, followed pretty immediately by the gastroenterologist. The doctor looked me in the eye and said ‘it’s cancer!’”
I took him home. You can imagine the torment. It hadn’t ever crossed our minds. He was only 47.
He died at 11:17 on Friday 15th November 2002. Exactly nine weeks after he was diagnosed.
Mike is irreplaceable. And his loss… I will never get over it. I’ve accepted his death. I accepted his death on the day he died. I have never come to terms with it. It should never have happened
His life ended, but if I had known then what I know now, I would have ensured that his persistent heartburn was checked.
21 years after Mike’s death and 20 years of running Heartburn Cancer UK, Mimi is still fighting to stop their story repeating itself again and again. There are around 8,000 deaths a year in the UK.
I am still hearing stories every day of people with persistent heartburn treating the symptoms with over-the-counter medicines, rather than checking the cause and it angers me. Every time I hear it, I know my job is not done.
We actually have the ability to diagnose this cancer early now. Progress has been made in the last 20 years. The capsule sponge test is really simple and can be done at a GP surgery, but thousands of people die from oesophageal cancer every year because they didn’t get checked soon enough.
We need people to know the signs, and we need to get this test into the primary care pathway, the GP’s surgery. That is my light at the end of the tunnel. I can’t stop until it’s done.
Please watch Mimi’s latest video below.
Association with HCUK: After knowing the symptoms of oesophageal cancer, Mimi knew Mike’s death could have been prevented and started her mission to raise awareness of the symptoms and importance of early diagnosis. This led to the launch of The McCord Oesophageal Cancer fund (MOCF) in 2003. Later in 2010, the charity became Heartburn Cancer Awareness and Support (HCAS) and then in 2014 the charity changed its name to Heartburn Cancer UK (HCUK) as it remains today.
