Cancer sufferer driven to fill "final days" with good deeds Published on Thursday 3 May 2012 01:19 A PHOTOGRAPH of Billy Connolly surrounded by children in Africa inspired a woman who believed she had just months to live to do voluntary work overseas so she could die thinking she had done something good with her life, a court heard. Helen McGlone, 32, is unable to have children naturally and she said it was the "biggest loss" of undergoing radical surgery for cervical cancer. She described the heartache of seeing pregnant women and children everywhere and having to turn away, until she found the best way to cope was to "look fear in the face." Dr McGlone said she had recalled an image on Comic Relief of Billy Connolly with children running around him. "He is laughing and joyful," she told the Court of Session in Edinburgh. Shown photographs of her and children in an orphanage in Morocco, she added: "Look how happy I am." Dr McGlone, of Falkirk, is claiming £5 million damages over misinterpreted smear tests in Glasgow in 2005 and 2006 which she had been told were negative. Greater Glasgow Health Board has admitted negligence but disputes the size of her claim as excessive. The court has heard Dr McGlone graduated from Glasgow University with a first-class honours degree in physics and applied mathematics, and became a researcher at the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (Cern) as part of her PhD. She had extensive surgery and radiotherapy. Prior to her treatment, she underwent IVF treatment in California so that surrogacy would be an option in the future. Part of her damages claim is for surrogacy costs. Her lawyers also contend that Dr McGlone was deprived of a lucrative career in banking. Her mental and physical ordeal of being diagnosed with cancer and undergoing treatment caused the loss of many of the abilities and qualities enabling her to work in a high-pressure environment, it is said. Judge Lord Bannatyne was told Dr McGlone developed an interest in working with children who were deprived and orphaned, knowing she may not be able to have her own. She carried out voluntary work in Vietnam, Kenya and Morocco. She was unable to do more than a few hours a day. Dr McGlone said that, following her surgery and treatment, she had been told she would have a scan in four months" time. I approached it as I had just been given four months to live. I attacked my thesis, and threw out job applications in case I was still alive next summer. "During the illness, I remembered saying to my then boyfriend, "I am 27 years old. I am going to die. I have done nothing with my life. He said I had a masters and PhD. I said, "These things mean nothing ... they are not life."" She said that after learning she could not become pregnant "there would be children in the park and I had to look away. I loved children. It was looking at what I had lost ... the biggest loss, the biggest pain. During treatment she asked her therapist how people worse off than her coped. She had been told the only way was "to look it straight in the face." Dr McGlone said: "I keep these words to this day. I had a picture in my head of Billy Connolly on Comic Relief with children all running round him. I decided I was going to look fear in the face. She added: "I do not know where I got the courage from. I think it was partly desperation. That's where it came from - "look fear in the face.""