Grimsby mum dies five weeks after being told she had six months to live

Tracey O'Reilly was only 59 when she died after doctors found four tumours in her brain and a growth on her lungs. Having been told she had around six months to live, her family were preparing for the worst, but just five weeks later, she passed away.

Now, daughter Danielle Bilbe is hoping to raise awareness and is urging others to get themselves checked out if they think something might be wrong. For Danielle, it's too late to save her mum, but she just hopes nobody else ends up in the same position.

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Paying tribute, she said: "Mum was perfectly fine until the end of November when she started being sick and feeling a pressure in her head. Then she stopped eating and the doctors prescribed her Gaviscon. A few days later she got much worse, but when she went back to the doctors she was sent away again."

Danielle added: "She was then in bed pretty much every day and just got told to rest up. Shortly after that, she said she thought she'd passed out for a bit, but it turned out she'd had a seizure."

Following this incident, Danielle took her mum straight to hospital where she was scanned before being given the devastating news that she had lung cancer and four tumours in her brain, one being nearly the size of a tennis ball.

After being diagnosed, Tracey went to Hull to be told she had four to six months left to live due to how aggressive the cancer was. Tragically, she would only live for another five weeks before suddenly passing away.

Danielle says when she was told her mum only had months to live it was awful, but to have her pass away so soon after was even worse. "I didn't go with my mum to Hull as she didn't want me to hear what they had to say. When she told me how long she had left she was really calm, but I just couldn't believe it.

"After that, she suffered heavily. She went from being able to walk into my house to needing a wheelchair to not coming altogether. In the end, she couldn't eat, drink or swallow. Seeing the person you love disappear in front of your eyes was so hard for me and my children."

She added: "Mum and I were so close and we texted every day, now it's silent, it's all so weird." However, Danielle wants to remember her mum for who she was, a kind, family orientated woman who lived for her granddaughters Alyssia, 13, and Alexis, 7.

"The kids were her absolute world. When she got diagnosed she told me she can't fall to pieces because it wasn't fair on them. Mum was really friendly with everyone she met too and would do anything for anyone, whether she knew you or not."

Life for Danielle and her children is even harder now, with the little things having the biggest impact. "She would always do us a fry up on a Saturday morning and a roast on the Sunday, but now we don't have any of those things.

"Life always takes the good ones first." Now, she's trying to make people more aware of how fast these things can happen and is urging people to get checked if something is wrong.

"You don't know how quickly this will happen, at Christmas I would never have thought my mum would be gone by February." Tracey's funeral will be held at Grimsby Crematorium on Thursday, 23 March, at 12pm.

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