Patient stories.
Get real stories of people living with lung cancer.
Meet Allison.
Allison found a lump. It was breast cancer. Then they found bowel and
RET+ lung cancer too.
I knew it wasn't pneumonia.Something just told me that he was trying to be kind, trying to break me into the idea gently.
When Allison, from Devon, found a lump in her breast, life was already full. She was a single mother of two boys, aged 10 and 17, one of whom has additional needs and was being home educated. She ran a small zero-waste shop by day and an accountancy practice in the evenings. She was also about to turn 50.
It was April 2023 and she went to her GP. Investigations confirmed she had stage 2 HER2 and oestrogen receptor-positive breast cancer. There was not much time to reflect and she moved straight into four months of chemotherapy. Then followed a mastectomy – quite major surgery, yet what struck Allison was how efficient and organised the experience felt. “I was literally in and out of the hospital within a couple of hours,” she says. “It's incredible what they do now.”
Doctors were confident they had got all the cancer. She breathed a sigh when was told there was no evidence of disease. But next would follow radiotherapy, just to be safe.
“I was just coming up into my 50s,” she says. “My life really was more or less consumed by the kids and work. I had also been thinking about what adventures I may take on. I never expected what came next.”
A shadow on the scan
Two days before Christmas 2023, a scan to plan her breast cancer radiotherapy found something doctors weren't looking for: a shadow on her lung, more than 10 centimetres across. Her oncologist called to say they would hold the radiotherapy. Could it be an old chest infection or pneumonia? A partly collapsed lung?
That day after receiving that phone call, Allison locked the door of her shop, turned the sign to closed, and sat down in the stockroom to cry.
“I knew it wasn't pneumonia. I don't know, something just told me that he was trying to be kind, trying to break me into the idea gently.”
A biopsy taken through her ribs came back inconclusive. Looking at the size of the shadow, a thoracic consultant told Allison she didn't think it was breast cancer that had spread there. Then she said words she has never forgotten: for Allison's sake, she hoped it wasn't lung cancer.
“I said to her, why would you not wish for that? And she said, because there is so much more that can be done for breast cancer, even secondary breast cancer. I'm still horrified that a thoracic consultant would say that.”
Three cancers, not one
To get a clearer picture of the lung, doctors ordered a wider scan, covering her chest, abdomen and pelvis. It turned up something else unexpected: a mass in her bowel. Within hours, a colonoscopy confirmed primary bowel cancer, not a spread from the breast. The consultant thought a PET scan would be a good idea – and it proved to be the case as it showed the shadow in the lung was also behaving like a primary lung cancer.
Breast. Bowel. Lung. Three primary cancers, discovered within months of each other, none of them caused by the others. However, it was the lung cancer that would go on to define the next two years of Allison's life.
“Never in a million years would I have thought that,” Allison says. A friend told her she had never prayed so hard for someone to have three different cancers, because three separate primaries, unlike one cancer that had spread everywhere, were all still treatable. “It would be miraculous if it was three separate primaries,” Allison remembers thinking. “That’s was what I was hoping for.”
KNOW YOUR BIOMARKERS
RET
RET stands for rearranged during transfection. We all have the RET gene. It provides instructions for a protein involved in signalling that helps certain cells grow, develop and survive, particularly during early development.In some cancers, part of the RET gene fuses with another gene, creating a RET fusion. This can leave RET signalling permanently switched on, driving cancer cells to grow. RET fusions are found in around 1–2% of non-small cell lung cancers (NSCLC).
RET is an actionable biomarker, meaning targeted treatments are available that specifically block RET signalling. Comprehensive biomarker testing is important to identify RET fusions and other alterations that may help guide treatment.
“Even the medical team were amazed by how well my cancer had responded to it. It really was incredible. It was like reversing time almost.
Waiting to heal
The plan for the lung cancer was surgery – called a pneumonectomy – to remove her entire left lung. But they had to wait. Doctors needed to operate on her bowel first, because losing half a lung would make any future general anaesthetic far riskier. Allison joined an NHS waiting list of three to four months for bowel surgery, the lung tumour still inside her, while also waiting on biomarker results that would take months to come back.
Allison had the bowel surgery: half her colon removed, a stoma formed, which has since become permanent. On the recovery ward, coming round from the operation, her oncologist told her the lung cancer was now also confirmed.
The surgery that never happened
The silver lining was they had found a biomarker for her lung cancer that had targeted therapy available: a RET gene fusion, treatable with a drug called selpercatinib. Allison had more options.
Around two weeks after being discharged from the bowel surgery, Allison was admitted to A&E with severe internal bleeding. A scan found a new lesion on her liver. Doctors assumed it had spread from the bowel cancer, but unfortunately it was from the lung cancer. That meant she was now stage 4 and the lung surgery was now off the table entirely.
Her lung cancer was acting rather aggressively. Tumours appeared almost overnight, on Allison’s chest, collarbone, and spine. She had been going to her GP with shoulder pain so bad that the only way she could sleep was lying in a hot bath, and had twice been sent away with pain medication. A brain MRI found metastases there too.
“Super Catnip”
Doctors put her on a RET oral targeted therapy called selpercatinib straight away, at the maximum dose. There wasn't time to wait. Within days, the golf ball-sized lumps on her chest, collarbone and spine were gone. The pain that had kept her sleeping in the bath disappeared within about 24 hours of her first dose. Online, the RETpositive lung cancer community she found calls the drug “Super Catnip.”
“Even the medical team were amazed by how well my cancer had responded to it. It really was incredible. It was like reversing time almost.”
It hasn't been without cost. The first six months brought fatigue, aching and fluid retention. She was also hospitalised with duodenitis (inflammation in the first part of your small intestine called the duodenum), which is difficult to manage alongside her stoma. These difficult experiences made Allison realise how important it is to be informed on your medical conditions. It was she who worked out that a drug prescribed to protect her stomach lining was blocking her body from absorbing her targeted therapy. Weeks of doses had been close to useless. Nobody at the hospital had flagged the interaction.
She has learned to ask everything, write it all down, research her own medications, and hold two hospital teams together herself.
“A couple of years ago, I wouldn't have been able to have this. I would have been straight down the chemotherapy route. This is the power of research. It's amazing.”
“A couple of years ago, I would have been straight down the chemotherapy route. This is the power of research.
Thriving today
For roughly two years, Allison's disease stayed largely stable on selpercatinib, alongside ongoing hormone therapy for her breast cancer and life with a stoma. More recently, scans found two small areas of new activity, in her lung and an adrenal gland. Rather than switching treatments, her team used targeted radiotherapy on both, and she remains on selpercatinib.
Having been treated for three cancers, Allison is most surprised by the assumptions that come with a lung cancer diagnosis. She feels a stigma and judgment she never experienced with her breast or bowel cancers.
Allison has loads of with advice for anyone newly diagnosed with lung cancer. “Don’t be afraid to keep asking questions. Even ask the same questions to different professionals to confirm the advice and don’t be afraid to research things yourself but look for reliable sources. I use my TKI manufacturer’s website to look up interactions, for example. Also find your community and specifically others with your mutation. It’s a lifeline.” In fact, Allison credits patient advocate Emily Walthall and the RETpositive group for helping her and many others.
Allison’s 50s are not at all what she expected. Yet she is thrilled to be here for her boys. With her amazing close friends. To have turned 50 somewhere in the middle of all this. She now looks ahead to more birthdays than three cancer diagnoses in one year once suggested were likely.
Sept 2026
Watch Allison’s Patient Voices podcast interview
Allison found a breast lump.
Then doctors found 3 cancers.