Young Isla Sneddon († 17) died of breast cancer after doctors repeatedly told her she was “too young” for such a diagnosis. Her parents now believe that if she had been treated as an adult patient, she could have lived, he reports She sought medical help for the first time at the age of 15 when she felt a lump in her breast. but the doctors assured her that it was probably a benign change caused by hormonal fluctuations.
Despite the fact that Isla was in pain and more lumps appeared in her breasts, the situation was not dealt with with sufficient urgency. At the age of 17, a biopsy was recommended to her, but the recommendation was denied precisely because of her age.
Isla’s health deteriorated dramatically in the summer of 2024. She did not feel well during her vacation in Rome and ended up in the hospital after returning. What followed were weeks of examinations at various hospitals across Scotland. Doctors discovered an aggressive sarcoma that had spread to the lungs, heart and lymph nodes. “It never occurred to us that it could be cancer. We had no cases in the family,” recalls her father Mark.
The disease was already in an advanced stage and the family was told by doctors that Isla only had six months to a year to live and treatment can only be aimed at alleviating symptoms. “A woman took us into a room and told us that our daughter was going to die. We thought we would address the stage of the disease and the treatment. We had no idea that it was only about mitigating the consequences,” says Mark.
Isla didn’t want to know the prognosis. She wanted to live as best as possible until the last moment. She died last March in hospital, surrounded by her family, after months of chemotherapy. The parents are convinced that an earlier and more accurate diagnosis could have saved her life.
“We’ll never know if it would have turned out differently. But we believe that if the cancer had been caught early, it wouldn’t have gone this far. We are empty, we are lost. I would never wish this on another family,” the father concluded. Today, the family leads a campaign for the adoption of the so-called Isla’s Bill, which would ensure that suspected cancer in children and young people is treated with the same urgency as adult patients.
