Matthew Moorman was referred to Royal Brompton by his local medical team in Sheffield, for specialist surgery for a lung tumour that was causing him severe breathing difficulties.
Matthew remembers: “I was 36 at the time of diagnosis. I had chemotherapy for seven months at my local hospital. The tumour responded well to the chemotherapy quite early on in the treatment and the blood markers plummeted. Unfortunately, the chemotherapy did not shrink the tumour, which was close to my heart.”
In fact, the tumour was very large: it had squashed up most of Matthew’s left lung and pushed his heart onto his right lung, which was causing serious breathing problems. Matthew says: “The ten-minute walk to the local shop to buy a newspaper began to take over half an hour. I was feeling fed up and frustrated because I couldn’t do much and was virtually housebound. I was grateful and relieved when Royal Brompton took me on as a patient.”
Matthew’s surgeon, consultant thoracic surgeon Mr Simon Jordan, says: “Matthew’s tumour was a mediastinal teratoma. The physical size of the tumour, even after chemotherapy, was life-threatening.
“Not only was the tumour pushing from his left-hand side but it was extending up into his neck and also pushing down into his abdomen. Although the chemotherapy had worked well and the tumour no longer appeared to be active there were concerns that the tumour could become malignant again.”
Just two days after the seven-hour operation, Matthew was already able to walk further than he had been able to before it, and was starting physiotherapy on an exercise bike to help get his lungs to work properly again. Since his treatment, Matthew reports that he no longer gets out of breath quickly when he’s out and about in Sheffield or in the Peak District, which he occasionally likes to visit. He says: “Life has got back to normal and I can’t thank Royal Brompton enough, especially Mr Jordan and his team, for what they have done for me. There are not enough superlatives in the English language that adequately describe what great work they do.”