‘My husband took months to get symptoms checked and died three weeks later’

A doctor took months to seek medical advice after suffering stomach pain and then died just three weeks after a rare cancer diagnosis. Thelma Ainsworth, 50, a lawyer, author and former RAF legal officer from London, said her husband Jonathan was a "fit and healthy" doctor and runner who was "always slim and always training".

He started complaining of stomach pain in 2019 but, despite his medical career, he did not seek advice straightaway – and in October that year, he was diagnosed with bile duct cancer and died just three weeks later, aged 59.

Being left a widow and single mother to two children: Dominic, now 12; and Richard, eight; Thelma said she "should have cracked", but instead, she channelled her "inner animal in order to survive". This "harsh and challenging" experience then became the catalyst for I Am A Wolf Tonight, the first book in her Surviving Badly series, which reveals all about cancer loss and grief.

She hopes sharing her story will encourage others experiencing symptoms to get "checked out as soon as possible".

"Jonathan, even though he was a doctor, he didn't get checked immediately, he waited until it was too late," Thelma told PA Real Life.

"(The book) is about perseverance – how much can you take? How do we carry on when we're dealing with our own internal trauma and external trauma? How do we keep all the balls in the air? I developed this harsh persona where I was just driving through life – and that's where the title, I Am A Wolf Tonight, comes from.

"I had to tap into my inner wolf in order to deal with all these challenges."

After graduating from the University of Cambridge, working as a lawyer and joining the RAF, Thelma met her husband, Jonathan, an "intelligent and talented" doctor, through a lonely hearts advertisement in The Guardian newspaper.

The couple married in March 2011 before having their two children, Dominic and Richard. In 2019, once Thelma had finished a decade working with the RAF, HIV and infectious diseases specialist Jonathan started complaining of stomach pain – but did not seek further medical advice for several months.

As he lost weight and the pain persisted, however, he spoke to another doctor, who referred him for a scan as his liver appeared inflamed. While waiting for the referral, Thelma said Jonathan decided to do his own bloods – and this led to his "shocking" bile duct cancer diagnosis in October that year.

"He was a doctor, so he decided to do his own bloods, and then one day he came back home and said it wasn't right," Thelma explained.

"So, he went off to St Mary's Hospital and they said that he had cancer – and then, three weeks later, he was gone. It turned out to be bile duct cancer, which is very rare, and it had spread everywhere."

The NHS says bile duct cancer may not have any symptoms, or they can be hard to spot, and this was the case for Jonathan. According to Liver Cancer UK, about 2,200 people in England are diagnosed with bile duct cancer every year. Thelma said her husband's symptoms "presented very late" and they never suspected it could be cancer.

"It was more advanced than we could possibly imagine ... we were always five steps behind what was going on," Thelma said.

"Go get yourself checked out."

When Jonathan died on October 25 2019, aged 59, Thelma had already been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) following a "difficult birth" with her second son, Richard. She said she was "on the cusp" of resuming her legal career and admitted that her relationship with Jonathan was strained before he died, with the pair having marriage counselling.

Trying to balance her grief, children, career, familial relationships and mental health struggles, Thelma said she utilised her RAF skills and "bunker mentality" to help her "plough on".

"I had hurdle after hurdle after hurdle," she said.

"I just carried on like that Duracell Bunny in that advert – you just carry on until, at the end, it becomes too much."

Thelma started a new job at a law firm just three months after Jonathan's death and found comfort reading books about grief and watching programmes like After Life, starring Ricky Gervais. However, she found that she started blaming herself, believing it was her fault for Jonathan's death.

"Since the diagnosis and for many months, maybe years afterwards, I blamed myself, that it was somehow my fault because of our marriage difficulties, because I didn't get him to check himself out," Thelma said.

In 2022, it "all came to a head" while trying to write a children's book – something she had wanted to do for years. She discovered that her grief acted as a "blockage" to her creative writing and therefore decided to start journaling – and these "raw" notes became the inspiration for her first memoir, I Am A Wolf Tonight.

"I realised that it was all playing out like a drama and it would actually do well to write it as a proper memoir, so I started to write it in that vein," she explained. "It was this blockage inside me that I felt I needed to release."

The book, which Thelma describes as "raw, unflinching and honest", explores themes of cancer loss, complex grief, love, resilience and perseverance. Thelma said there is "no right or wrong way to do grief", but she hopes her words will offer hope and encourage others to be patient and kind to themselves.

She said: "At some point you will reach a stage where you're able to process that grief, but it will take years, and I'm not unusual in that. I hope that my book is helpful for anyone who's been in that circumstance where they've had to go out of their way to reveal their inner animal in order to survive."

Speaking about her advice on cancer, she added: "As in Jonathan's case, once you know that there's something wrong, get yourself checked out as soon as possible."