A mother who died from bowel cancer said in an interview before she passed away she was "angry" her treatment had been put on hold because of COVID-19.
Kelly Smith, aged 31, from Macclesfield, Cheshire was told by doctors in March her chemotherapy treatment would be paused for 12 weeks.
Weeks later during lockdown, tests showed her cancer progressed and was now terminal.
"I’m angry that I got put on this break, because I don’t think that I should've (been),” Kelly told BBC.
“I’m angry at COVID because it’s made me have this six-week break, it’s made me be put into this situation now.”
Kelly was just 28 when she was diagnosed with bowel cancer in April 2017. She was a mother to six-year-old son Finn, and in her last interview shortly before she died on June 13, she said she was “terrified, absolutely terrified.”
“I don't want to die. Like I feel like I've got so much more to do,” she told the BBC.
Her friend, fellow cancer patient and BBC journalist Deborah James reports there have been many people who were denied life-saving treatment due to COVID-19.
“COVID-19 stole the most precious thing from my friend: Time” James wrote in The Sun. “Two million screening tests for breast, bowel and cervical cancer have been missed. Urgent cancer referrals have plummeted 60 per cent, putting more lives on the line.”
