A ‘kind, fun and brilliant’ mum tragically died from an ‘incurable’ cancer so rare some of the nurses treating her had never even heard of it.
Lesley Turner was 40 when she died on July 22 last year having been diagnosed with angiosarcoma after doctors found a lump in her breast the previous November.
The brave mum-of-one, originally from Stranraer in Dumfries and Galloway, asked medics at Northern General and Weston Park hospitals in Sheffield not to reveal how long she had left.
Her heartbroken husband Rob, 41, said: ‘We knew pretty quickly that it was serious. However Lesley just smiled and said, “I’m still here”.’
He went on: ‘She had chemotherapy for about four months but she always had a smile on her face and said, “if you don’t laugh, you’ll cry” – so we tried to just get on with it.’
Lesley spent the last five days of her life at St Luke’s Hospice, and Rob promised her he would honour her dying wish to raise money to thank them ‘for the most amazing care’ she received.
He said: ‘They took really good care – not only of Lesley but all the visitors including me. They gave me a bed and fed and watered me – they took really good care of everybody.’
The couple, who had an eight-year-old son together named Liam, met in Glasgow in 2007.
Rob was fitting out an Iceland store where Lesley was the manager, and they began to hit it off.
Before heading back to Sheffield once the job was finished, he left her an Easter egg with a sweet note attached saying ‘hope to see you soon’.
He recalled: ‘We started texting each other and for a good year we were up and down visiting each other. After a year we said we would make a go of it.
‘I said I’d move up to Glasgow but Lesley said I wouldn’t last five minutes, so she moved here to Sheffield.’
First appear at Mum-of-one dies from ‘incurable’ cancer so rare nurses had never heard of it
