When mother-of-one Alexandra Gerrard went to the accident and emergency department of Epsom Hospital, the pain was unimaginable.
The 34-year-old was in agony – so much so that she couldn’t even walk.
But despite her suffering, NHS doctors told her she should take some painkillers and go home.
What they missed was a condition that changed the course of her life forever.
It all started when she was enjoying a well-deserved break in Miami, away from her job as a primary school worker.
She was walking down the road when she tripped over a hole, injuring her back. She had already been experiencing a ‘niggling’ feeling in her foot and had been seeing a chiropractor for pain in her back.
The fall made everything worse. When she returned home from the holiday, she slipped again – this time in the shower.
Alexandra said the pain was ‘excruciating’ and she ‘could barely get in the car’.
But when she got to A&E, doctors didn’t examine her. Instead, they gave her prescription for diazepam and told her to home.
‘I just remember sitting in Epsom accident and emergency, with tears falling down my face because I couldn’t actually get out of this wheelchair, with the prescription in my hand,’ Alexandra said.
Alexandra Gerrard, 34, had her whole life ahead of her with her eight-year-old son Thomas (pictured together)
But when Alexandra went to accident and emergency after a series of falls, her life changed forever
She was in agony after first tripping over a hole while on holiday and then slipping in the shower
What the doctors had missed was that a tumour was creeping towards her spinal cord.
Doctors at a different hospital later told her she was in ‘imminent risk of paralysis’.
Far from simply having a bit of temporary pain that could be fixed with some painkillers, Alexandra had stage four cancer. There were even cancerous cells in her liver and lungs.
Her first thought was of her eight-year-old son Thomas.
She said: ‘It was like time stopped, like time stood still, and everything becomes really surreal.
‘It’s like everything is moving around you and you are frozen in this strange place, where you can hear what the doctors are saying but it’s like a film where your head is running at a hundred million miles an hour.’
‘The life you lived before is just shattered in an instant and you are left thinking, ‘Wow. I quite possibly only have a few years left to live.
She added: ‘I wasn’t scared. I just felt a lot of sadness.
The single mother previously lost her father, This Morning sound engineer Nick Thomas (pictured with Alexandra as a young child) to a rare appendix cancer in 2018
Pictured: Alexandra’s father Nick with her beloved son Thomas as a toddler, before he passed away in 2018
After being barely able to move in Epsom A&E she was given a diazepam prescription and send home
‘I had to accept my lot and realise now I had to absolutely go and live the best available life that was available to me and my son,’ she said.
‘Every time I broached it he got so upset, and then he turned around and he said to me, ”Do you want to die or something?”
‘And I was like, you know what? He’s completely right. I’m focusing too much on the dying part of this.
‘I knew that I was sort of like the primary rock in his world.
‘I just had to get back to him, and we have to go and live and make amazing memories.’
She said the behaviour of Epsom’s doctors was ‘incredibly frustrating’.
Speaking of the moment she was sent home by Epsom’s A&E doctors, Alexandra said: ‘They just they turned me away with a diazepam prescription.
‘They didn’t take an X-Ray. They knew my medical history but they didn’t do anything.
‘They were like, ”What do you want us to do? We’ve discharged you from the system now”’ and I thought, how am I even going to get myself to a chemist?’
Tragically for Alexandra, this is not the first time she has been diagnosed with a serious medical condition.
When she was just a teenager she had a chronic autoimmune disorder called mysathenia gravis, which causes muscles to be weak, especially in the eyes, face and throat.
She then went through six months of radiotherapy after an operation to remove an abnormal growth related to her condition.
Finally she thought she could live her life the way she wanted.
She moved to Canada and gave birth to her son.
Alexandra has been no stranger to ill health having been diagnosed with a chronic autoimmune disorder, mysathenia gravis, as a teen
In a poignant message to others, Alexandra urged everyone to not ‘wait until you’re dying to start living’
She said: ‘The reality is we live in a very unsafe world, but when you have cancer, you’re so confronted with the fragility of life, and how uncertain every tomorrow is’
But tragedy soon struck once again, as she was forced to return to the UK following her father Nick’s terminal cancer diagnosis. Nick, a sound engineer on ITV’s This Morning, passed away from a rare type of appendix cancer in 2018.
Three years later, in 2021, Alexandra went to the Royal Marsden Hospital when she noticed shooting pains in her chest following breastfeeding. Doctors said she had breast cancer.
Determined to find a solution so she could continue to watch her toddler grow into a young boy, Alexandra battled the cancer undergoing a single mastectomy and further chemotherapy when the cancer returned in her scar lining.
However, she won her fight with the disease in 2022. The single mother thought she could finally start to grow her family again with her new partner when this latest series of events took place.
Now her focus is on making sure Thomas gets to spend as much time with her as possible before she becomes too unwell to travel.
In their travels, she hopes to cultivate an ethos within him of caring about more than just material possessions.
‘Its about the people you meet, the experiences, and with the right outlook life can look infinitely more beautiful,’ she said.
‘I really believe he chose me to be his mum and I feel so honoured that a soul would choose such a difficult path.
‘I feel like he is saving my life.’
Describing the ‘cancer club’ as the ‘worst’ experience with the ‘best people’, she added: ‘I was so humbled by all of these incredible people who I felt were gifted from the angels.
‘The reality is we live in a very unsafe world, but when you have cancer, you’re so confronted with the fragility of life, and how uncertain every tomorrow is.
‘We are often caught up in all of the distractions of life that we forget there are beautiful moments in the mundane.
‘Don’t wait until you’re dying to start living.’
Epsom and St Helier University Hospitals NHS Trust has been approached for comment.
