Copyright mirror
Paula Hudgell is used to winning battles - she’s made a safe and happy home for adopted son Tony, whose birth parents abused him so badly that his legs had to be amputated and has has even managed to change the law. Paula battled to bring in Tony’s Law - increasing sentences for child abuse and including a maximum life term for anyone who causes or allows the death of a child in their care. She received an OBE in 2022 for her services to the prevention of child abuse, while in 2024 Tony, then nine, became the youngest ever recipient of a New Year ’s Honour - receiving the British Empire Medal for his services to the same cause. Mother and son have both also received Daily Mirror Pride of Britain awards, while the exceptional little boy calls the Princess of Wales his “best friend.” And the family launched the Tony Hudgell Foundation to enhance the lives of children who have been affected by physical, emotional or psychological abuse. But Paula, 58, now faces a battle she can’t win - against terminal cancer. She was dismayed when she discovered Tony, now 11, had been telling his teacher that he was “worried about Mummy.” Paula says: “Life has been so tough for Tony but he never, ever complains so it breaks my heart to know he has approached his teachers at school a few times to say he’s ‘worried about mummy”. In her first major interview since finding out she was stage 4 terminal in June and that her cancer had spread to her lungs and peritoneal, she has revealed that doctors misdiagnosed her FOURTEEN times, taking four years to detect the disease. But it is her family - Tony, her other children Lacey, 13, Ben, 36, Ryan, 33, Chloe, 30, Kyle, 23, Jess, 19, Jaden, 18, and her husband Mark, 61, an asset manager - that she worries about most. Paula, of West Malling, Kent, says: “My prognosis has affected the entire family’s mental health. It’s hard for all of us to get our heads around, but I’m trying to prepare them as much as possible. I was on the school run with Tony last week and he turned the radio up, because there was a love song playing that he liked. He told me he was going to have it at his wedding. It suddenly hit me that I won’t be at his wedding. I had my tears from him but it hurts so much that I won’t see him grow up or get married. I’m just devastated for him and all of my children. It shouldn’t have been like this.” First diagnosed with bowel cancer in February 2022, she is speaking out to encourage anyone suspecting they have cancer to ensure they are tested as soon as possible. Paula was 50 when she first saw a GP after suffering bouts of diarrhoea and constipation, but was told she had IBS and sent home. Reviewing her notes after her diagnosis, she realised she had seen GPs 14 times, but says she was 'fobbed off' with dietary advice, prescriptions for antacids, or told it was the menopause. She says: “I knew something wasn’t right, so I made an appointment with the GP, but was told it was IBS. I kept going back, but my symptoms would last for three or four weeks and then settle down, so I thought maybe the GPs were right. “I got used to my symptoms, but then, after four years, I was on the loo and it was almost like my late mum spoke to me and I called the GP with the grit I’d have used if one of the kids was ill and said ‘I need an appointment today.’ I went with a different attitude and wouldn’t take no for an answer. I’d started seeing the bowel cancer adverts on TV and demanded they test a stool sample. I knew deep down something was wrong, but I was so busy being a mum I put my problems on the back burner. “It was a locum GP and he agreed to do the test, thankfully. But I should have pushed harder before. I should have stood up for myself and demanded they (the doctors) take me more seriously.” Her cancer markers were “through the roof” and two weeks later she was diagnosed with bowel cancer, complicated by having been left for so long that the tumour had grown through the bowel wall. Her consultant believes it could have been growing for up to ten years. A critical six-hour operation, followed up with ‘mop-up’ chemotherapy proved successful, but then her bowel blocked twice and surgeons had to operate again and move the site where they had sectioned the bowel. Treatment included a temporary stoma and then, in June 2024 after her re-sectioning surgery, she developed sepsis and emergency surgery was required. In the midst of all this, Mark was diagnosed with prostate cancer. Fortunately, his treatment was successful and he was declared cancer free this year. Meanwhile, Paula, was told “the best possible news” - she was also cancer free. She says: “I didn’t even complain to the GP. I just moved to another practice and decided to put it all behind me”. But, scanned every three months because of a nodule on her left lung, in June, she discovered her cancer was back - with a vengeance. She says: “I went to the appointment alone, because I had been called in to discuss a scan I’d only had three days before and didn’t want to manage anyone else’s feelings. “Lacey was at home from the Royal Ballet School and had a performance at the Royal Albert Hall at the end of that week. I was desperate not to spoil it for her, so had planned to keep the news to just Mark and I. But, Mark had gone to pieces and so we had to tell the children. We sat Tony down and told him Mummy’s cancer was back and I was going to have to have lots more treatment. Hospital trips have been such a routine part of his life he didn’t question it. To him you can go through awful things, but you always survive - he doesn’t know I’m not going to survive this and nor do I want him to. We’ll keep that from him for as long as we possibly can.” Despite everything, Paula is now campaigning with Tony - the second child she and Mark were given to foster - to enforce the introduction of a child cruelty register in the UK. She says of meeting with Tony: “It was love at first sight, but also absolute heartbreak. He was so small and broken, with tubes everywhere. We weren’t sure he could survive what he’d been through but he had these huge, beautiful brown eyes. We fell in love.” Tony’s birth parents failed to get him medical help after abusing him, leading to him developing sepsis and doctors feared he would not survive. “I remember meeting with a surgeon who read through the list of surgeries he would have to go through,” says Paula. “He shook his head and said, ‘Who on earth would take on a child with these needs?’ Without a second thought I said, ‘We will’. It was automatic. We were only temporarily fostering him but both Mark and I knew we were never going to let him go. From the moment we saw those eyes, he was ours.” Tony’s birth parents Jody Simpson, then 24, and Tony Smith, then 46, from Whitstable, were found guilty of causing his near-fatal injuries at Maidstone Crown Court in February 2018, receiving the maximum sentence available at the time of 10 years. Both were released from prison this year and in two years are entitled to change their names and move anywhere they like. They can even have more children if they wish. “They could be the neighbours you ask to watch your kids over the garden fence, with no way of knowing they are the people responsible for such cruelty to their own six-week-old baby, that he lost both his legs and then lied about it to save themselves, rather than save their own son,” says Paula. "We want child abusers' names to be kept on a fully accessible register and all the while there is fire in my belly I will do everything in my power to beat the system again, before this cancer beats me.” Paula is now waiting to hear whether surgeons will operate on her perineal, which will involve five weeks in hospital - five days of them in ICU. She says: “It involves cutting me open from the sternum to the pelvis, removing as much of the stomach lining as possible and flooding my stomach with chemo for up to an hour before flushing it out. "This operation is horrific. But if it gives me a little longer, I’ll do it because every extra day I get to be here for Tony is worth any amount of pain,” says Paula, who is planning to take 61 children to Lapland this Christmas with the Tony Hudgell Foundation. They don’t like to tell you how long you’ve got. I’ve googled it and it has scared the life out of me. One website said nine months but I’m not going to even think about that.“ The mum, who sent love to the Princess of Wales when she revealed she had cancer, also talks fondly of her, saying: “Tony got to go to Buckingham Palace for a garden party in May and we had a lovely chat with Prince William and Kate. We joked about the joys of boys when we both realised we had musical children - with Louis, like Tony, having his own drum kit and George being passionate about the guitar. They couldn’t have picked noisier hobbies!” Paula is currently nearing the end of her chemo treatment, which she has every two weeks. She says: “They hook me up for five hours and then I go home with a chemo drip that lasts 48 hours and enough steroids to keep me upright. Afterwards it is exhausting, but I’m now seven sessions down with only one to go.” And she hopes to make the Lapland trip, adding: “I just couldn’t miss that for the world .” Meanwhile, her strength and dignity remain unshaken. She says: “Tony has taught us all so much about resilience and while I’m devastated at my diagnosis I just think, at least it isn’t him. He’s been through enough and has the rest of his life to live. I’ve had mine and it’s been a really good one. I consider myself lucky.”
