Woman diagnosed with cancer twice due to smoking had her kidney and lung removed after filming a goodbye video to her children
A woman who was diagnosed with cancer twice from smoking had her kidney and lung removed, as well as a goodbye video ready for her children.
Cathy Hunt, 59, from County Durham, was just 11 when she threatened to snitch on her three older brothers for smoking.
To keep her quiet, they passed her a cigarette - and Cathy carried on the habit for decades.
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Just two days before her 50th Birthday, the mum-of-four received a shock lung cancer diagnosis in 2015, without having any symptoms.
To have any chance of survival, half of Cathy's lung needed to be surgically removed.
Not knowing if she was going to survive surgery, she recorded a goodbye video to her children if the worst were to happen.
Cathy told LADbible: "The guilt that you feel, the choice you made and you're leaving young children behind and never seeing them grow up, not watching them get married, not seen them have their own children.
"I mean, I've been fortunate enough, touch wood, that I'm still here, but at the time, you know, we didn't know that that was going to be the case."
Following a successful surgery, Cathy was adamant she wouldn't touch another cigarette ever again.
However, after a few years, she was out for drinks with her friends and the addiction took over.
After going to see doctors for what she thought was a chest infection in 2022, they advised her to go for a scan before she was diagnosed with cancer for the second time.
Cathy said: "Two years ago I got diagnosed again with lung cancer on the other side and kidney cancer."
Getting cancer at the age of 49, then again at 57, she couldn't believe it, and was forced to have back-to-back surgeries.
"This time they found it in my lung and in my kidney," the mum explained.
"I was fortunate enough, whatever way you want to look at it, that it was two completely separate cancers.
"So I had the operation on my lung first, and they said, 'once you're sorted out with that, then we'll sort your kidney out'.
"So I had that in November, and then in June, I went in and had my kidney removed."
Thankfully, Cathy is now cancer-free, but still goes in for regular check-ups.
But with all that's happened, she is still very aware of her addiction to nicotine, and doesn't want her loved ones to go anywhere near cigarettes.
This comes after one of her older brothers passed away from lung cancer last year.
Insistent on never picking up a cigarette again, she will only occasionally use nicotine lozenges to curb the habit in social situations.
Cathy's story highlights the dangers of smoking as she's urged people to take part in Stoptober to help them give it up once and for all.
Stoptober is the Department of Health and Social Care's annual stop smoking campaign, based on evidence that if a smoker makes it to 28 days smoke-free, they are five times more likely to quit for good.
"I do think it gives someone a goal," Cathy said on the campaign.
"If I can get to the end of the month, then we'll see where we're at. So I do think it does help to kickstart it, to get the process thinking about quitting smoking."
Click here for more information on Stoptober
Anish Vij