DEBORAH James has said she would have died if she had waited for an ambulance on the night she began vomiting blood.
The columnist for the Sun, who has incurable bowel cancer, was rushed to hospital by her husband, where she was taken into life-saving surgery.
Had he not been there, she fears her children would have had to watch her die, after they had begged the 999 handler to “help Mummy”.
The mum-of-two, who lives in West London, is “very angry” and traumatised by the service she recieved.
Deborah has been living with bowel cancer for five years, becoming one of very few to outlive the prognosis given by doctors.
In early January, the 40-year-old told her almost 400K followers she had been rushed to hospital in a near-death experience – the “hardest, most heartbreaking and scariest” parts of her cancer battle.
She began “aggressively vomiting very large volumes of bright red blood” and was losing conscioussness.
Deborah quickly phoned her husband, Seb, 42, who was at a physio appointment around the corner.
On a BBC Breakfast segment this morning, Deborah said: “My husband found me with Eloise screaming down the phone, saying ‘you have to help my mummy’, because I was unable to articulate things anymore.
“The only response we got was, ‘do you still want an ambulance? There is a 30-minute delay on it. We understand you are worried, but we cannot get anybody to you any sooner’.
“I’m so angry about that. Had I had to wait for that ambulance crew I wouldn’t be alive.
“And that’s what upsets me because I keep playing out the ‘what if’ scenario, and the what if scenario is I wouldnt be here.”
The London Ambulance Service told the BBC that “this must have been a very distressing experience”, and they “advised help was on its way but, as is normal in periods of high demand, there could be a potential wait”.
This week, Deborah detailed the traumatic events that started in her own home in her Things Cancer Made Me Say column.
She wrote: “Seb cancelled the ambulance and slammed the phone down.
“I appreciate in traumatic situations you look to blame someone, but I had one call and nobody could help.
“Is this being repeated elsewhere in the country? I felt totally unheard, I felt like they were leaving me for dead.
“I felt like someone had just decided: ‘Sorry, we can’t save you today, there’s no space’.
“I’m bawling my eyes out remembering that vivid moment, feeling so let down by a system I believed would be there.
“It has left me with such deep scars, I sometimes don’t know how I will ever cope with being alone again.
“My husband scooped me up, took me downstairs and put me in the car.
“At that moment, I knew I was dying. Everything was turning very grey, I couldn’t stand upright.”
Deborah had to say goodbye to her children Hugo, 14, and Eloise, 12, but could only muster telling them “I love you”, before Seb drove her to Chelsea & Westminster A&E.
There, Deborah was resuscitated and taken into emergency surgery.
She said: “He [consultant] told me either my portal vein had ruptured or my oesophageal varices – veins in the oesophagus – had haemorrhaged, which happens in liver failure from the pressure of the portal vein.
“It turns out both my portal vein had obstructed and my varices had ruptured too.
“All of this had been caused by my cancer – of course, my body doesn’t try to kill itself by half!”
Deborah spent 18 days across two hospitals, being taken to the Royal Marsden to try and fix her blocked bile duct.
The former teacher has a growing tumour around her bile duct that is causing her liver to fail.
It was ultimately the cause of her medical emergency – among many others since the summer.
Deborah, podcaster on You, Me and the Big C, said: “Weeks later, I am still dealing with the trauma, and reliving it is like ripping off a plaster.
“I nearly died. In fact, not nearly. I was dying and I was saved.”
Trending In The News has contacted the London Ambulance Service for comment.
