The Crown star Olivia Williams has given a stark revelation following her 7 year battle with pancreatic cancer, saying that if she had been treated for the right condition sooner, “then one operation possibly could have cleared the whole thing and I could describe myself as cancer-free, which I cannot now ever be.”

Speaking with The Times, the actress revealed that she spent four years seeing ten different doctors in three different countries trying to get to the bottom of symptoms she was experiencing, such as fatigue and chronic diarrhoea.

She was originally diagnosed with lupus before being told it was likely that she was menopausal before discovering that actually, she had a 7cm by 4cm tumour in her pancreas, which a biopsy showed was cancerous.

Olivia is now supporting Pancreatic Cancer UK

Explaining how difficult the cancer is to diagnose, she said: “The average time from diagnosis to death is three months – and that figure has not improved in 50 years.

“It takes an average person with my cancer [a VIPoma cancer within the pancreas] 11 visits to the GP to be diagnosed. For me it was probably about 21 times.”

Olivia is supporting Pancreatic Cancer UK – the London Marathon’s charity of the year – in raising awareness in a plea for donations to fund earlier detection of pancreatic........

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