The husband of a woman who overcame breast cancer at 36 has shared how his wife initially believed her symptoms were merely “simple indigestion” before a devastating diagnosis of pancreatic cancer 18 years later.
Jason Venkatasamy, 59, a graphic designer from London, recounted his wife Lucy Driver’s health journey.
Ms Driver was first diagnosed with breast cancer in 2005, aged 36, just six weeks after noticing “oozing on the nipple”.
She underwent an operation to remove her left breast, followed by chemotherapy. Mr Venkatasamy described her recovery as “pretty good”, leading to remission within a year.
For the next 15 years, Ms Driver experienced no significant “medical issues”, aside from mild, intermittent indigestion, which her husband noted she “always used to have”.
However, by March 2022, aged 54, her health began to decline. Mr Venkatasamy observed that Lucy “didn’t want to eat anything acidic”, “struggled” during a hike for her 54th birthday, and generally “didn’t feel good”.
While he suspected pancreatitis, Ms Driver saw her doctor for a blood test within three weeks. The urgency of her condition became clear when she received a call instructing her to “get to A&E as soon as possible”.
open image in galleryStill assuming it was not serious, Lucy went to the hospital the following morning while Jason caught the train to work that day, as normal.
Jason told PA Real Life what happened next: “Lucy phoned and she said, ‘I’ve got some news for you. It’s pancreatic cancer’.
“And then she passed me on to the doctor. Once I got off the phone, I just burst into tears on the carriage.
“I knew we were gonna have one hell of a battle on our hands, even though I didn’t know anything about pancreatic cancer.
“That was the start of a very hard four years.”
Jason met his Yorkshire-born wife at a pub in Richmond on New Year’s Eve in 2001 and they exchanged email addresses.
They sent each other emails in the months after, before Jason travelled to France – where Lucy had been living for over a decade – for their first date in March 2002.
For a year afterwards, Jason said he spent “at least four or five days every month” in Paris with Lucy before she moved back to London in early 2003.
By the time Lucy was 36 in 2005, Jason said she started experiencing “oozing” on her left nipple, which led to her breast cancer diagnosis within six weeks.
“It was quite quick,” Jason said, “From going through tests and scans, seeing the doctor… and having an operation.”
open image in galleryJason said Lucy’s operation was a success and she underwent chemotherapy “as an insurance”, which he described as “awful, but she got through it”.
Within a year after the surgery, Jason said Lucy was in remission, but she “went back every year” for check-ups.
The pair got engaged in late spring 2006 and then married on 20 September, 2007.
In the years since, Jason said: “We were just a normal couple really, going about our lives and working hard.”
Jason cannot recall when Lucy’s indigestion problems first started, but remarked she “always seemed to have” it intermittently in the years after receiving the all-clear from her breast cancer diagnosis.
He said: “It always makes me think back now if that was a continuous symptom of cancer rearing its ugly head.”
Jason said Lucy’s symptoms intensified around her 54th birthday on 30 March, 2022, when she developed an aversion to acidic foods, she struggled with a Seven Sisters hike they did together, and she generally “didn’t feel good”.
He added: “I never thought it would be cancer. It didn’t even enter my mind.”
Three weeks after her birthday, Lucy went to her GP for blood tests, resulting in a phone call urging her to go to A&E as soon as possible.
“We both still thought it wasn’t cancer,” Jason said. “We just thought it was some sort of pancreatitis or something that could be solved.”
The next morning, in April 2022, Lucy found out she had stage 2 pancreatic cancer, aged 54.
The pair had a follow-up consultation with a private specialist, who Jason said gave them the “bad news” that the cancer was “too big” and Lucy would need to have chemotherapy to shrink it.
open image in galleryJason said: “When she left the consulting room, she just reduced in size.
“And then she was so upset because she knew what chemo was going to be like, so that really hit her hard,” he added.
Jason said Lucy’s “really strong” cancer treatment from November 2022 saw her develop painful ulcers in her mouth that made eating difficult, causing her to “lose about a stone and a half”.
Her tumour was removed in May 2023 during a 12-hour operation and Jason said the pair were “happy and relieved” to hear it was successful, before she underwent radiotherapy and more chemotherapy after finding a further “mass in the liver”.
In March 2024, Jason said the couple were “surprised” to hear that “everything’s cleared”.
Jason said: “We thought we’d dodged a bullet, as it’s very rare to get past pancreatic cancer.”
According to the charity Pancreatic Cancer Action, 50 per cent of people diagnosed with pancreatic cancer will die within three months, and 93 per cent will die within five years.
Life returned to normal for Lucy – her hair grew back and she started gaining weight – but by Christmas that same year, she began experiencing indigestion symptoms again.
Within weeks, a follow-up scan confirmed Lucy’s cancer had returned and had spread to her liver again.
Lucy went through more radiotherapy and then chemotherapy, but Jason said his wife’s “body just couldn’t really take that much” more of it by mid-2025, so she decided to stop treatment in September.
She began palliative care from October via local district nurses who Jason said “came around once a week”, before her health deteriorated by the end of 2025.
open image in galleryOn 3 January, 2026, Lucy died, aged 57.
Jason remembered: “She was very active in her bed and couldn’t get comfortable.
“I remember thinking I should keep her hydrated so I went to the kitchen to get some water.
“I think she waited for me to get back to the bedroom, and then that’s when she passed away.
“It was a shock because she deteriorated that morning very, very quickly,” he added.
In the aftermath of his wife’s death, Jason said Lucy’s workplace raised £6,000 in her memory and he wanted to do something of his own to “mark Lucy’s life in some form”.
So Jason is undertaking a 34-day walk over 800 kilometres via Spain’s Camino de Santiago this August to raise money for Pancreatic Cancer Action.
Jason said: “I really want to warn people that pancreatic cancer is pretty much a death sentence.
“But if you’re lucky enough to notice the early symptoms of indigestion or jaundice and react to it straight away, then you’ve got a fighting chance,” he added.
For more information about Pancreatic Cancer Action, visit their website here: https://pancreaticcanceraction.org/. And to donate to Jason’s JustGiving fundraiser, visit his page here: https://www.justgiving.com/page/jason-venkatasamy-camino