I knew something was wrong with my sister on our daily walks – now she’s made a bucket list
A WOMAN has been devastated to discover the real reason her sister was struggling on their daily lockdown walks.
Twins Leanne and Lyndsey Allen, both 35, would go for hour-long strolls at the height of Covid.
But that came to a stop when Lyndsey began showing unusual symptoms.
Leanne told Nottinghamshire Live: “At the beginning of Covid when she started exercising more that’s when problems started.
“We used to go out walking during that hour a day so we’d go 10 miles, and then she got to the point where she couldn’t do it anymore because she kept on needing the toilet so many times a day.
“First she was misdiagnosed, then she got poorly for a couple of months.
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“After she had scans done and then they found it all, with her starting going to hospital in April time in 2020 and being diagnosed in July, near her birthday.”
Lyndsey, who lives in Meden Vale, was diagnosed with neuroendocrine cancer, which has since become terminal.
It prompted her to start writing a bucket list, which Leanne fears she is running out of time to complete.
It includes attending a festival, a hot air balloon trip, learning sign language, seeing the Northern Lights and “making my family proud”.
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A neuroendocrine tumour, diagnosed 6,000 times in the UK per year, can grow anywhere in the body when neuroendocrine cells start growing uncontrollably.
Neuroendocrine cells have a number of functions and symptoms depend on where in the body the tumour grows.
It disrupts how hormones work, and may cause frequent urination – as Lyndsey had – increased thirst, dizziness, shakiness, a skin rash or diarrhoea.
Children’s carer Leanne said there was an 18cm tumour in Lyndsey’s pelvis and another in her stomach, but “all her organs” had smaller tumours.
The news that her “womb mate” had cancer “ripped her family apart”.
They had hoped that chemotherapy would give Lyndsey more time since her diagnosis almost two years ago.
But at their last consultation, they were told this wasn’t possible, and the cancer was terminal.
“This news was the worse day of our lives and seeing the upset in Lyndsey’s eyes will live with me forever,” Leanne wrote on a GoFundMe page.
The doting sister said they almost lost Lyndsey in August 2020, when she got deadly sepsis in response to an infection.
Leanne said: “She’s in constant pain and on a lot of medication, with morphine, steroids, and everything.
“One of the tumours has developed in her right lung and collapsed it a bit, so she ended up doing a 10-day stint in hospital over the Easter Bank holiday when she had eight litres drained off her lung.
“It’s torn our family apart, mum and dad struggle because they’re thinking they’re going to lose a child before she hits 40.”
Leanne, who has lived with Lyndsey since they bought a house together in 2017, said it was “heart-breaking” to watch her sister in so much pain.
She started a GoFundMe page to finance Lyndsey’s dream trip to Orlando Disney, among other dream trips and activities to make lasting memories.
Leanne said: “I think we were a bit naïve on how sick she is, and in the last two consultations they asked if she was still in touch with the hospice in palliative care, which obviously means that things aren’t great.
“So I said it’s time that her bucket list gets smashed. She sent it over and I was wowed.
“The big one is that she’s always dreamt of going to Orlando Disney, and there are other things like the Maldives.
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“We just want to get doing everything we can.
“Since having cancer she’s been the strongest one out of all of us, she’s been incredibly positive despite it all.”
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