Patient perspectives on surgery.

Curative lung cancer surgery was only the beginning: Angela’s story

A former financial controller and mother from Glasgow, was diagnosed with stage 1 EGFR-positive lung cancer and thyroid cancer within weeks. Using her nursing and finance expertise, she fought for the right surgeries and better care, revealing gaps in post-operative support and demonstrating the power of patient advocacy.

The journey isn’t finished after surgery.

Angela Tyre worked as an accountant in the renewable energy sector in Glasgow, Scotland, navigating the male-dominated renewable energy sector with confidence. A 58-year-old mother of three adult children, she also kept fit – attending body combat classes twice a week and climbing hills for fun. Numbers were her language – precise, predictable, balanced. But in 2024, two separate cancers upended everything.

It began with chest pains in 2021 that felt like heart attacks. Twice, she went to the emergency department, only to be told her heart was fine. A CT scan in February 2024 revealed nodules in her lung and neck. Within weeks, Angela was diagnosed with not one but two cancers: stage 1 EGFR-positive lung cancer and thyroid cancer.

The invisible patient

“When I kept complaining of extreme exhaustion, unexplained pain, and just not feeling myself, my GP thought I was neurotic and hadn’t recovered from an ovarian surgery,” Angela recalls. “She even told me I was catastrophising.” When she reminded her GP of her background as a staff nurse and her high pain threshold, scepticism persisted.

Her chest pains – which turned out to be lung spasms – sent her to the emergency department twice, presenting like cardiac events. Both times, she was discharged with no clear plan. It wasn’t until February 2024, during her second emergency admission, a CT-scan revealed something that had been hiding in plain sight: nodules in her lung and neck.

The hospital discharged Angela without a clear follow-up plan, no information, and no clear next steps. "They just said you'll probably have to get a repeat CT," she remembers. The lung nodule, she would later discover, had been visible on scans dating back to 2021 at 8mm – but no one had connected the dots.

Angela & husband

The advocate emerges

Necessity drove Angela to become her own advocate. When she couldn’t obtain travel insurance for a planned holiday because of undiagnosed nodules, she pushed for answers. Appointment delays stretched into months, and she requested faster timelines.

The turning point came with a repeat CT-scan in April 2024. The lung nodule had grown from 11mm to 14mm. Using her nursing and accounting backgrounds, Angela calculated growth trajectories herself. “Being an accountant and loving spreadsheets, I used the Brock model to graph my nodule if it continued to grow at the same rate,” she explains. Clinicians using the Herder model had calculated a malignancy risk of 1.3% if non-spiculated, 2.3% if spiculated, recommending close surveillance. Angela’s analysis showed a potential jump to over 49% if growth continued unchecked.

Angela, husband and three children

The surgery decision

At Glasgow’s Golden Jubilee Hospital, the thoracic surgeon presented two options: a smaller wedge resection or a lobectomy. The surgeon told Angela that research showed better survival with lobectomy for malignant tumours. The surgeon offered a VATS (video-assistance thoracic surgery) wedge section with frozen pathology and conversion to lobectomy if malignancy was confirmed.

On the day of the surgery as Angela was being moved to the operating table the surgeon said that he and his radiologist colleague were “95% sure it wasn’t cancer” and suggested just doing the wedge resection.

Angela insisted: “It’s a one-time-only for me. I’m not coming back for a second lung surgery.” Her instinct proved life-saving. Frozen-section pathology confirmed lung cancer, and the lobectomy proceeded immediately.

 My lung cancer nurse tells me about a patient with stage 4 lung cancer who says she has breast cancer because people are kinder.

System gaps

Recovery was brutal. A failed nerve block left Angela screaming on the ward. Staff responses often lacked empathy and care: one nurse asked, “Did you get your food?” when she reported severe pain and lack of care. Another refused her husband’s presence during chest drain removal.

Weeks later, Angela underwent a second surgery for her thyroid cancer which didn’t go to plan, which meant a third surgery four weeks later.  In total, 20 thyroid tumours were removed between the two surgeries. After the first planned thyroid surgery Angela was left in recovery until just before midnight being told there was no bed for her on the ward. Overall, her thyroid cancer care was handled by a completely different team at across three hospitals, underscoring the fragmented nature of her treatment.

Although her lung cancer was found at an early stage and treated with curative intent, the surgery did not mean she could “go and live your life,” as her physician put it. Her lung cancer is managed by a respiratory physician rather than an oncologist, and she is now on a five-year surveillance protocol with quarterly scans and the constant spectre of recurrence.

Angela has yet to have a clear scan result from her quarterly surveillance scans since her surgery in July 2024. At her recent lung cancer scans in July 2025, a new 3mm ground glass nodule was found in her previously unaffected lung and a growth on her right lung next to her bronchus thought to be a “cyst”. This information has been gathered in fragmented calls and appointments with her Lung Cancer Nurse Specialist and respiratory consultant. It turns out the ground glass opacity was there in March 2024 and the nodule on the scan in March 2025.

Despite having undergone immense stress from these dual diagnoses, Angela has never been offered mental health support. “The journey isn’t finished after surgery,” she emphasizes. “Surgery was only the start, not the end.” She adds, “The lack of integration means separate appointments, separate monitoring schedules, and separate anxiety cycles around each set of scans. My care has spanned five hospitals, which feels like silos. I have never seen an oncologist as my cancerous nodule was too small, now I might have another and will still not see an oncologist and most likely will still not qualify for adjuvant therapy despite possibly a second cancerous nodule. I just need to hope it goes away.”

The hidden burden

Angela hadn’t anticipated the emotional toll of a lung cancer diagnosis. For nine months, she carried a sense of "shame" of having lung cancer, reluctant to tell anyone.

The stigma is real: studies show 40–60% of people are less empathetic toward lung cancer patients, assuming it was self-inflicted through smoking. Angela, who smoked briefly until 28 and hadn't touched a cigarette in over 30 years, found herself repeatedly defending her "non-smoking" status to medical professionals and even other cancer patients. EGFR lung cancer isn’t linked to tobacco, yet lung cancer carries this unique social burden.

Angela also feels a sense of guilt of being diagnosed early when speaking to other patients as most are diagnosed at stage 4. She adds, “I have yet to meet someone who has undergone curative intended surgery. A lung cancer pathway with CT-scans for people over 50 with a significant smoking history has yet to be rolled out in Scotland. England has proved this works and diagnoses patients at an earlier stage giving them a better outcome.”

 “My lung cancer nurse tells me about a patient with stage 4 lung cancer who says she has breast cancer because people are kinder,” Angela shares. This illustrates the unique burden lung cancer patients carry, not just the medical fight, but the social judgment.”

Finding her voice

Angela’s experience galvanized her advocacy. She testified at the Scottish Parliament on early detection and screening, supporting the Roy Castle Lung Cancer Foundation. She also started a very small bookkeeping business, in helping local organizations while maintaining the flexibility her health requires. Angela adds, “I can’t work many hours as I get sore and tired but at least I can do a few hours a week.”

“Stay strong, be determined about what you want,” she advises other patients. “Self-advocacy can make the difference between further operations or a one-time successful surgery.” Her surgeon later praised her tenacity, noting that without her insistence, she might have faced additional procedures.

Despite finding her voice, Angela shares that she is not the women she was pre-diagnosis and has lost her confidence. Despite this, she is determined to make a difference for those to come with her advocacy work.

Surgery isn’t the finish line: closing gaps in follow-up and monitoring

Angela’s story highlights both the life-saving potential of timely surgery and the gaps in post-operative care. Fragmented treatment, inconsistent pain management, lack of mental health support, and minimal patient education leave individuals to navigate recovery largely alone.

Now 13 months post-lung surgery, Angela is reclaiming her life. She has returned to body combat, taken up crochet, and planned a month-long trip to Italy with her husband.

Due to the new 3mm nodule finding, Angela would like patients to have access to ctNA blood testing, which can detect circulating tumour DNA, but is not yet available in Scotland – nor are early detection CT pathways.

Angela’s surgeries are giving her a chance at survival – but for patients, the operating room is not the finish line. Surgery is a starting point, requiring follow-up, integrated care, and advocacy to truly transform a life. “I’m trying to silence the cancer thoughts,” she explains, “by building up the other ones.”

September 2025