My fiancé never smoked but died of lung cancer aged 24 just three weeks after being diagnosed
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Alex Wysocki, who lived with his fiancée Lauren Holden in Illingworth, had never smoked a day in his life before being diagnosed with lung cancer aged just 24. Doctors kept telling the couple his condition would not be serious because of his age and fitness.
"As a young person, you think lung cancer is for people who are 60 and have smoked all their lives,” said Lauren, 23. “Alex had never smoked in his life."
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Hide AdAlex, who played for two football teams and worked for his family’s water treatment firm, started suffering from lower back pain in September. He initially put the pain down to a football injury but when it persisted, went to his GP.
Lauren said the doctor assured him it should improve and would not be anything serious because of his young age. But the pain increased and Alex even gave up football in the hope it would ease.
An MRI scan showed something unusual on Alex’s spinal cord and Lauren said the doctor was convinced Alex had lymphoma – a type of cancer - with one of the doctors assuring them it was treatable.


In January, Alex started getting headaches and was breathless, and in February tests came back revealing Alex had cancer in his bones, skull and lungs.
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Hide Ad"We were just in shock,” said Lauren. “He had cancer in all these places.”
In March, Alex was told the shattering news that he had stage 4 lung cancer and it was incurable. "We were just devastated but at this point I didn't think he would die,” said Lauren. "I thought it might be something he had to live with but he could get treated."
Just three days later, Alex was struggling to breath and his skin was yellow, and he was admitted to the ICU suffering from an infection. A drug aimed at shrinking the cancer and antibiotics for the infection initially improved his condition but two weeks later he deteriorated again, with doctors believing he had developed another infection,


They advised putting Alex on a ventilator. Four days later, his loved ones were told there was nothing more doctors could do for Alex. He died on March 28, surrounded by his loving family, just three weeks after discovering he had lung cancer.
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Hide Ad"I just wish people knew more about this type of lung cancer,” said Lauren. “If they had tested him back sooner, they might have found it sooner.”
Alex had a rare form of lung cancer which is hard to treat. Campaign Alex is on TikTok and aims to reach young people, teaching them the symptoms to watch out for and educate people about non-smoking lunch cancer.
"We just want to get the symptoms out there for young people to look for them,” said Lauren. “It is important for people to recognise these symptoms and not to ignore them.”
The symptoms are lower back pain, clubbed finger, a cough that doesn't go away, recurrent chest infections, shoulder pain, chest pain or discomfort, shortness of breath or breathlessness, stabbing pain in the side of body, wheezing, hoarseness, loss of appetite, fatigue, weight loss for no reason, headaches and coughing up blood.