Ongoing acid reflux and heartburn are symptoms many people put down to high-stress lives but for one man the diagnosis was far more serious. Photo / Getty Images
I suffered from heartburn for years, but it took choking on a panini to discover I had cancer.
My life changed in November 2023 with something that was totally ordinary. I was running between meetings and stopped at a cafe outside Farringdon Tube station in London to grab a panini and a bottle of water, and I was wolfing it down on the escalator as I often would, when a chunk of ham and cheese got stuck in my throat.
I realised I was choking, but by that time I was on the Tube, and watching the doors slide shut behind me. I gulped my water to try and get it to pass, and then – an experience so horribly embarrassing that I’ll never forget it – I threw up all over the carriage.
Looking back, I’d been having heartburn for years. Problems swallowing are a well-known complication that comes along with heartburn, in severe or persistent cases. I later learnt that I had an undiagnosed hiatus hernia, which led me to develop Barrett’s oesophagus, a condition caused by persistent acid reflux, but back then I had never heard of it.
I put the heartburn down to my busy lifestyle and stress because my life was certainly stressful. On top of a high-pressure career and two small children at home, earlier that year I’d had tenants refuse to leave a flat I owned in London, and I was going through a lengthy court battle to evict them. It’s enough to make anyone tear their hair out.
In my job as a UK sales director of one of the world’s biggest car companies, and among my friendship group of busy 40-somethings with high-pressure jobs and young families, stress and heartburn were accepted as ordinary parts of life. I remember walking into a meeting with my laptop, a notebook and a packet of Gaviscon, the other two guys in the room laughing with me when we saw that we were all doing the same.
I’d even debate which brand of heartburn medicine was best, with colleagues and friends alike. Sure, there’s a line on the packet telling you that you should speak to a doctor if your symptoms persist for more than a week, but that was something I would never find time to do.
After what happened with my panini on the Elizabeth Line, though, I started to take the troublesome situation in my throat more seriously. I phoned my GP, who simply told me that I had persistent heartburn and prescribed me lansoprazole, a medication that lowers stomach acid. I took it for 30 days, in which time I had no problems swallowing, but over the following months, my throat felt tight, like there was something stuck inside it again.
The final straw came in the Easter weekend of last spring. I was on holiday in Spain with my fiance, Mimi, our kids, and my brother and sisters. The five of us grown-ups were having a child-free night at a lovely restaurant, and I ordered a steak, my favourite food.
I took an enthusiastic bite, savouring the taste and swallowing it, and then it got lodged in my chest. It was painful, and heavy, like a stone stuck in my throat. My brother and sister couldn’t stop laughing at me, and I tried to play along, but my stomach had turned cold and I was terrified. Something was badly wrong.
As soon as I got home I phoned my doctor again, who offered me more lansoprazole. I asked how long I’d be on it for and was told that plenty of people take it for life, with no issue. I’m the sort of person who nine times out of 10 will trust a doctor and go with whatever they advise, but I knew it was something more serious.
After pushing I was put through to another GP, who just so happened to be a gastrointestinal specialist, and who said that if I was really worried then he’d book me in for an endoscopy, just to be sure that everything was fine.
The following month I was sent to Wexham Park Hospital in Slough, where my son was also having a scan, so we made it something of a family day out. Time together was rare and precious, between the pace of my job and my daily commute, so even a day on a hospital ward was a treat.
An endoscopy is incredibly uncomfortable, so most people get sedated to have one, but I was so keen to be at work the next day that I went unsedated (you can’t drive for 24 hours after sedation in a hospital). Mimi and my son waited outside.
Halfway through, as my jaw ached and I wrestled myself to stay still, the room went cold. Ali, the same doctor who’d booked me in, pulled the camera out and turned to me with a worried look. “I can’t give you a formal diagnosis, because we need your biopsy to come back, but I’d be very surprised if you don’t have cancer of the oesophagus,” he said. “You have a huge tumour in your throat.”
Sitting there in that booth alone, my world fell out from under me – and my fiance and my son were outside, waiting for me to drive them back home. Far worse than hearing the news myself was giving it to them, especially since Mimi had lost her stepfather to prostate cancer just two years before.
All of us were devastated. I thought I’d have forever to be there for my children. Even though my daughter was only 2 at that point, I had already been dreaming of the day I’d get to walk her down the aisle. It seemed like some sort of cruel joke, that I’d come in with heartburn and left with a (probable) cancer in my chest.
I later learnt that I had stage three oesophageal cancer, meaning that it was advanced and large and that it had spread to my lymph nodes. It took a fortnight for my biopsy to come back and for me to get a formal diagnosis, and then another month for me to then find out the stage my cancer had developed to.
I had a strange set of examinations to check that the cancer hadn’t spread to my stomach or anywhere else in my body. Eventually, I was given the green light to go down the only route possible, chemotherapy and then surgery to remove most of my oesophagus. It was a pathway with a “curative intent”, one of those bewildering phrases that you hope to hear when you have a cancer diagnosis. If my cancer had metastasised, I’d have been looking at palliative care.
After my endoscopy, I promised myself that I wouldn’t Google anything about oesophageal cancer. I lasted about 10 hours before I broke and searched, is oesophageal cancer curable? I learnt then that my odds were not good, with less than one in five people living for longer than five years post-diagnosis. Mimi meanwhile went into project manager mode (she does it professionally), researching the best places for me to get treatment, the latest surgeries and the most advanced forms of chemotherapy. We had the freedom to choose because I had private health insurance through my job.
I started chemotherapy six weeks after my diagnosis, on June 27, 2024. And then I did something crazy. I went to the Glastonbury festival, the day after my first round. Mimi loves Glastonbury, and we’d gone all-out to celebrate her 40th birthday there, with a glamping tent and all the trimmings. There was no way that I was going to miss it.
Truth be told, Mimi had really needed to twist my arm to get me to go to Glastonbury with her in the first place when we’d got the tickets the previous autumn. The end of the quarter was always the busiest time for me at work.
But I’d been signed off after my diagnosis, and I’ve never felt more grateful to be alive – and with my family – than I did that weekend. We spent those days watching Coldplay and dancing until 4am, with my son on my shoulders. I certainly realised then what was truly important to me.
I got married before my chemotherapy was done, too. Mimi is the love of my life, and it had always been clear to me that I wanted to marry her, but after she gave birth to our eldest, life really sped away from us and there just never seemed to be time to plan a wedding. Then we were filling out life insurance forms and I realised how ridiculous it was that we didn’t share a last name.
We had our wedding in the summer at The Windsor Guildhall, a beautiful venue next to the castle, and then we crashed the Soho River House with 30 of our closest friends. Everyone jokes that we had a long engagement and a shotgun wedding, which really was a blessing. We had everything as we wanted it, though I’d never imagined myself wearing a hat with my suit on my wedding day.
Not long after that came the surgery, at Royal Surrey Hospital in Guildford with an incredible surgeon, Nima Abbassi-Ghadi, and his team, to whom I’m incredibly grateful for doing the miracle work needed to save my life. What I underwent was at the cutting edge. It was a minimally invasive robotic surgery.
My surgeon removed the majority of my oesophagus and reconnected what was left to my stomach, so I’m left with very little scarring. It took 11 hours, but I was walking the next day, and I had left the intensive care unit by the end of the week.
My life has changed dramatically since that operation. I haven’t yet braved steak again, as these days I have to stick to softer foods, eating smaller meals more frequently. At Christmas, I stuck to bite-sized chunks of turkey and pigs in blankets, with heaps of bread sauce and gravy. I’ve lost 10kg since my surgery, and it’s hard to put any weight back on with my current restricted diet, but with each day I’m recovering and getting more adventurous with food.
The other week, to celebrate Lunar New Year, I had a takeaway with friends, where I ate duck pancakes – a favourite of mine – for the first time since my surgery.
I got the all-clear in January, so now I’m in remission. People usually imagine that to be a joyful, champagne-popping moment, but I’d never allowed myself to entertain the idea that I might die, so getting the news felt like the culmination of a long journey, one that had left me truly exhausted, physically and mentally.
Telling people that I’m cancer-free, though, has been something special: first, my family, my friends and the many people who have helped me along the way, and eventually my colleagues, though I’ll need some time yet to recover and process what I’ve been through before I return to work.
I’ve always been fit and active, but getting back on my feet and running has been another mental and physical boost in my recovery. Now I’m training to run an ultramarathon in October, to raise money for the heartburn and cancer charities that have supported me along the way. I’ll be running the Oxford Town and Gown 10k this May, marking a year since my diagnosis.
I want people to know what oesophageal cancer is and to raise awareness of its symptoms, like the heartburn I wrote off. I’ve been told that my persistent heartburn likely did cause my cancer because the constant damage that heartburn causes to your oesophagus makes it more likely that a tumour will grow there.
Heartburn is both a symptom and cause of oesophageal tumours. I’d wish I’d known this years ago, but I was still lucky. Had my cancer not been caught when it was, thanks to that panini, I might not be here to tell the tale.
As told to Lauren Shirreff
Oesophageal cancer is cancer that develops in the gullet or food pipe. It is one of six cancers considered to be less survivable and makes up around 2% of all cancer diagnoses in Britain.
Untreated chronic acid reflux or heartburn, smoking, alcohol consumption and obesity are all known risk factors for oesophageal cancer. People over 75 are most likely to develop it, and men are considered to be at greater risk than women.
Symptoms often only appear late in the progression of oesophageal cancer. Warning signs include difficulty swallowing, unexplained weight loss, persistent indigestion or heartburn, chronic coughing or a hoarse voice, vomiting, and new anaemia or abnormal blood tests.
Radiotherapy or chemotherapy are the main treatment options for oesophageal cancer. Surgery is typically only an option when the cancer has been caught early.
There is no sure way to prevent any cancer, but maintaining a healthy weight, avoiding smoking and excessive alcohol consumption, eating a diet rich in fruits and vegetables and low in processed meat, and seeking treatment for persistent heartburn, are all ways to lower your risk from the disease.
Cases of oesophageal cancer in men have risen by more than 10% since the mid-1990s. Rising obesity rates, poor diets and delayed diagnosis times, as well as an ageing population, are all potential reasons why oesophageal cancer is on the rise.
– Aniqa Lasker
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