A widow says she has "survivor's guilt" after her husband died of cancer while she was undergoing chemotherapy which helped save her life."

Shona Maclaren, 34, was diagnosed with cervical cancer after bleeding which she said doctors dismissed as postpartum symptoms.

But as she underwent treatment, husband William, 41, was diagnosed with advanced stage four bowel cancer.

And just nine days later he died in a hospice on what would have been Shona's last chemotherapy session of her first of two stretches of the treatment.

William had been suffering abdominal pain and inflammation, but thought it was due to his pre-existing ulcerative colitis.

But a test just days before he died revealed he actually also had bowel cancer.

Mum Shona is now in remission and survivor’s guilt about why she was "picked" to survive - and worried about what she'll tell her kids Thea, six, and Mason, two."

Accountant Shona, from Stevenson, Ayrshire, Scotland, said: "He was in and out of consciousness and I talked to him that whole day he died."

"I don't know if he heard me. I hope he did because I hadn’t had a chance to tell him that my treatment was working."

"This is where the survivor's guilt comes in. I can't sit here and tell you ‘oh my treatment is working, but you’re dying.’"

"It’s heart-breaking and I don’t think that it will ever not be heart-breaking."

"When Thea and Mason get older it's going to be tough to try and explain, ‘why did Mummy live and Daddy die?’ - and I'll never be able to answer that."

"Nobody saw this happening as fast as it did. "

"That’s just one thing you’re never guaranteed is time. It angers me that I got a chance to fight and he never even got a chance to start."

Shona’s first symptoms were abnormal vaginal bleeding in the form of blood clots when she had been going to the toilet, and she became anaemic.

She believes her symptoms were "downplayed" by doctors due to being five months postpartum."

"I had high blood pressure during my pregnancy so I contacted my doctor and one of the things that I asked him was, ‘Is this normal?’ - because I didn't have this with my first born," she said."

"He said 'that will just be your body normalising after birth'."

"I was on the phone with the doctor and I remember it so vividly, there was blood just pouring out of me. "

"I was shouting down the phone saying: ‘If I was a man and I was bleeding this much you would be doing something about it - this is not normal!"

She had a colposcopy and a biopsy, and two weeks later was diagnosed with stage 2B cervical cancer, on May 20, 2022.

She began chemotherapy on June 30 2022 and William and Thea supported her by shaving off her hair.

"The first day at chemo was really emotional - going in and being the youngest person in the ward," she said."

"It still didn't feel real. I just burst into tears when they started. For all the nurses it's something they deal with all day everyday. "

"l was very much in denial all the time. "

"When my hair started falling was when everything really sank in. My hair was just coming out in clumps."

"My husband and daughter shaved all my hair off. I told her mummy has a lump in her tummy and my hair is going to fall out. But cancer doesn’t really mean anything to a five year old."

William had been screened previously for bowel cancer, but these came back as negative.

But while his wife was undergoing treatment for cancer, his own pain became more severe, and he was retested for cancer.

He was diagnosed with advanced stage four on August 23, 2002, and was unable to receive treatment.

By August 29 2022 he started to deteriorate and was taken to a local hospice where he fell in and out of consciousness.

He died on September 1 2022.

It would have been the day of Shona's last chemotherapy session in stint one of her treatment, before she began the second phase of chemotherapy, using different medicine.

"I did not cope very well at all," said Shona. "

"I was terrified. I didn’t know how this was going to work - I thought we had more time."

She said: "Everything had happened so fast. He got home Monday, deteriorated on Tuesday, put up in the hospice Wednesday and died Thursday morning."

Shona felt relief that she and her kids no longer had to watch him suffer.

She added: "I think the day he passed, the overriding feeling was ‘he’s not in pain anymore.’ "

"I could see how much pain he was in and it wasn’t fair. "

"All that mattered to me at the time was that he didn’t need to suffer anymore."

Shona had her last Paclitaxel and Carboplatin chemo treatment on September 13, and her husband's funeral was held seven days later.

She said: "They drugged me up to the highest so that I had the energy to be able to go to the funeral and get through it."

"That in itself was tough."



She said his funeral was the worst day of her whole experience.

"It didn’t feel real, and it felt real being in the funeral and laying his body to rest," she said."

"There was a glimpse into my new reality that he wasn’t here anymore; a realisation that life is fragile and that I was still very much in the middle of my own fight."

Shona lost her own mother, Winnie Brown, 45, to cancer when she was aged 11.

"My little boy had just turned one in June," she said. "

"It was difficult for me when I found out I had cancer, never mind the dad being told that he's got cancer and it's permanent. "

"I was determined from the get go to not let this kill me - even more so when my husband passed. "

"I’m not letting my kids grow up without a mum - they’ve already lost their dad." "

Shona said she still talks to William every day.

"He is still a huge part of my life," she said."

"I celebrate his life everyday. I still talk to him everyday, I still moan at him everyday!" "

Shona has encouraged her children, Thea and Mason, to take the same approach in their grief journey.

She said: "For Father’s Day I’m trying to make sure the kids still do something even though their dad isn’t physically here. "

"We can still celebrate the memories we do have for him. We picked up flowers and painted pebbles and took them up to his grave."



"You try to look for reasons. He had ulcerative colitis and was therefore susceptible. "

"And for me it was missed because during Covid-19 the NHS weren’t doing smear tests and then I fell pregnant so couldn’t do them then." "

Shona encourages young girls to get the cervical cancer vaccination.

"Who knows, if I had gotten this vaccine it may have never happened," she said."

"I just wish we had more time - I thought we had more time. I didn’t get a proper goodbye."