Chloe's campaign for change

Chloe, 25, lost her mum Louise to ovarian cancer five years after she was sadly misdiagnosed. Chloe has now decided to put her effort into making change so no one else has to go through the same. She tells us her mum's story here.

My mum, Louise, was first diagnosed with Stage 1a Ovarian cancer in March 2022, but unfortunately her story did not start there.

She began feeling unwell towards the end of 2018 and after speaking with her GP, was referred to her local hospital. Initially in January of 2019 she was advised she had a benign tumour, called a cystic teratoma, and that was removed. Because this was benign no follow up treatment was required.

In March of 2022 came her first diagnosis of ovarian cancer, where she underwent a big surgery to remove two fluid filled sacs. She was very poorly for a month after and then she had a 6-month course of chemotherapy. In December 2022 she was given the all-clear and life seemed to be looking up.

Then, in March 2024, she became unwell again and when this was investigated she was advised the cancer had returned and was stage 4.

It turned out that unfortunately she had been misdiagnosed in 2019: the original tumour that we were told was benign was in fact malignant.

Because no follow up treatment had been provided at the time, the cancer had spread and was incurable. She sadly passed away three months later on the 26th of June 2024 at the age of 47. My mum was the glue, and she would hold everyone together, but there's now a noticeable hole that no-one can replace.

It has been confirmed to us that had there been intervention at the point that the tumour was wrongly deemed benign, there is a high likelihood that my mum would still be alive today. She could have had surgery, chemotherapy. That’s a horrible thought to navigate.

We’ve had to face the unimaginable, losing our mum.

The woman who made everything feel safe, is gone. Our grandparents have lost their daughter, as well as our Uncle who has lost his younger sister. We’ve all been swallowed by a silence we will never be able to escape.

While we can never bring my mum back, we believe that we can fight to change practice. More must be done to prevent this from happening to others. My mum's name will live on and it will have purpose. She wanted to fight the cancer and had the right thing have been done, she would have had the chance to. But now that she can't, that's now my duty. I think she would be proud.

Louise's Law is the new movement to ensure that all benign scans/biopsies are passed through a second opinion, either through another specialist or through AI technology.

The petition being run to make this mandatory has reached over 43,000 signatures and is growing stronger each and every day. You can read more following this link below: Petition · Enforce Louise’s Law; ensure second opinions on benign scans are made mandatory. - United Kingdom · Change.org