A woman reckons a packet of prawn cocktail crisps saved her life after the 'tangy' taste helped her learn she had cancer.
Doctors probably wouldn't recommend a bag of Walkers as a diagnosis kit, but 45-year-old Hazel Smyth started noticing a stinging sensation on the right side of her tongue when she ate the crisps and thought it might be some sort of allergy or intolerance.
She felt as though the pain would go away after about 10 minutes, but then she started feeling it when she was eating foods with a less sharp flavour too and decided it was time to go and see a doctor.
After a couple of biopsies, Hazel was diagnosed with stage one tongue cancer in August 2024 and went in for surgery to remove a part of her tongue before it was discovered that the cancer had spread to her lymph nodes and she was stage four.
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Given a 50 percent survival rate, Hazel then had another operation which removed two tumours from her lymph nodes and was declared cancer-free in November 2024.
The Northern Ireland woman is glad that she got an early warning sign which she first felt from prawn cocktail crisps, saying: "I was actually just eating prawn cocktail crisps and I thought the right side of my tongue was stinging. I looked at my tongue and there was nothing there - no redness or anything.
"Then it never happened again. A few months later I had a chicken curry from the Chinese and the tongue was stinging so much, I had to put cold water on my mouth.
"It was just a plain, mild curry. When I tried to eat the curry again, the same thing happened. It was always the right side of my tongue. It was a hot, stinging pain. It felt like my mouth was on fire and would last around 10 minutes.
"I just thought to myself maybe I just can't eat this type of food anymore. Maybe I have an intolerance. If I wasn't eating spicy food, I was fine. I had no other signs or symptoms."
She's glad she didn't just put the whole thing down to some sort of allergy or intolerance and says the crisps and curry 'helped save my life'.
"It was my body telling me there was something wrong with me," Hazel said.
"I would tell anyone else to get any pain or changes in your mouth checked out by the doctors."
Hazel explained that she felt like she'd been 'looking death in the eye' and wondering whether she'd have to plan her own funeral after being told the cancer had spread and her chances of survival were 50-50.
She's currently planning on doing a sky dive next month to raise money for Action Cancer, which you can donate to here.
Topics: Cancer, Health, Charity, Food And Drink
Joe Harker