Grieving husband claims Sheffield mum with cancer was 'neglected' as coroner rules she died of natural causes

Concerns over the hospital care given to a Sheffield mum, 48, who died with ‘aggressive metastatic cancer’ were raised by her husband at an inquest.
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Jayne Grant, of Westfield, died at the Northern General Hospital in Sheffield on November 2 last year after suffering with bladder cancer which spread to her brain in November 2018.

The mother-of-two had also been treated at Weston Park Cancer Unit during the last years of her life, after a tumour on her bladder was initially found during scans which took place in December 2017 following a miscarriage.

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At the inquest, her husband, Matthew Grant, raised concerns over the treatment of his wife in the months preceding her death.

The inquest was heard at the Sheffield-Medico legal centre.The inquest was heard at the Sheffield-Medico legal centre.
The inquest was heard at the Sheffield-Medico legal centre.

His concerns included Mrs Grant being ‘left on a bed’ where she was unable to got to the toilet, and the lack of provision of oxygen when she was discharged and allowed to go home shortly before her death.

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Assistant coroner Katie Dickinson heard at the inquest that Mrs Grant became ‘very ill’ on her wedding night in September 2017, and a ‘tumour the size of a lemon’ on her bladder was discovered in scans in December that year.

Mr Grant said that the doctor who discovered the tumour told him it must have been growing ‘for at least a year’.

Weston Park Hospital in Sheffield.Weston Park Hospital in Sheffield.
Weston Park Hospital in Sheffield.
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Speaking at the inquest, Professor Syed Hussein, consultant oncologist at the Northern General Hospital, said that he began treating Mrs Grant in June of 2018, after the tumour was identified as an ‘advanced aggressive type of bladder cancer’ following surgery in February that year.

Mrs Grant was treated with chemotherapy, from which she experienced side effects which led to doctors stopping it and putting her under surveillance.

Professor Hussein said that the cancer metastasized to Mrs Grant’s brain in November 2018, and she was given drugs to treat this between December 2018 and January 2020.

However, the disease continued to progress to other parts of the body, and Mrs Grant underwent more chemotherapy between March and May 2020.

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She suffered side effects from her treatment in hospital. At Weston Park she was put in an IV drip for sickness, which led to her suffering ‘IV overload’ – a condition that can cause organ failure.

Mr Grant raised concerns about the way Mrs Grant was treated at the hospital, and the fact she was sent home shortly after the IV overload.

He said: “She was neglected. She was left on a bed. I am not happy with how she was treated at Weston Park. I am not happy that I had to go and wash her. All the fluid was weeping out of her.

“I went to see her on her bed and I was told she was fit enough to go home when she was full of the IV overload.”

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He later said: “Every time she came home from hospital she seemed worse than she was when she went in.”

Mr Grant said that because of the IV overload causing bloating, Mrs Grant was unable to go to the toilet while at hospital. He said this led to ‘blockages’ in her bowel which meant she was unable to urinate into her catheter.

He asked whether this led to kidney failure Mrs Grant experienced. However, doctors explained at the inquest that this kidney damage was caused by the spread of the cancer.

When a further tumour on her brain was discovered in September 2020, Mrs Grant was given radiotherapy – something Mr Grant told the inquest he was concerned about as she was still unwell following her chemotherapy.

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Professor Hussein said: “[Mrs Grant] was a fighter. She went through these treatments. She had side effects, but she had great support from Matthew, and she managed to go through multiple types of treatments. She did extremely well.”

Following her radiotherapy, Mrs Grant was deemed fit enough to go home to be with her family.

Mr Grant told the court that his wife needed to be on oxygen when she was discharged and sent home, but the company that was due to fit the oxygen supply in the house never turned up.

In a statement read out at the inquest, Baywater Healthcare said they had attended the address on October 27, 2020 – two days before Mrs Grant was discharged – but nobody was in so they could not fit the oxygen supply.

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However, Mr Grant told the court he was in all day on October 27 and had successfully taken delivery of a commode on the same date.

Doctor Shironjit Saha, a chest consultant who treated Mrs Grant, said the lack of oxygen in Mrs Grant’s house ‘was an oversight’ and that ‘she should have had oxygen’.

Assistant coroner Dickinson said that this ‘needed to be looked into’ because although the oxygen would “not have saved her life it would have made it easier for her in her last days.”

Within 48 hours of being discharged on October 29 Mrs Grant was taken by ambulance to Northern General Hospital, where she remained until she died on November 2.

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Speaking about his wife to the court, Mr Grant spoke about how they had started out living in a car in Eckington, and had ‘built their lives together’, establishing a car business and renting a family house with Mrs Grant’s sons.

“I first saw her in 2012 and it was the best thing I’d seen in my life,” he said. “We built everything up from nothing.

"We had a really good, happy relationship and we worked hard for it."

Assistant coroner Dickinson found that Jayne Grant died naturally from metastatic bladder carcinoma, and advised Mr Grant to take up his concerns regarding her care with the relevant hospitals.