A London lawyer and former RAF officer has penned a poignant account of her grief after her husband, a doctor, delayed seeking medical help for stomach pains and tragically died just weeks after a rare cancer diagnosis.
Thelma Ainsworth, 50, describes her husband Jonathan, 59, as a “fit and healthy” doctor and avid runner who was “always slim and always training”.
Despite his medical background, Jonathan delayed seeking advice when he began experiencing stomach pain in 2019. By October of that year, he received the devastating diagnosis of bile duct cancer and passed away just three weeks later.
Left a widow and single mother to two young sons, Dominic, now 12, and Richard, eight, Thelma admits she “should have cracked” under the immense pressure. Instead, she tapped into her “inner animal in order to survive” the ordeal.
She hopes sharing her story will encourage others experiencing symptoms to get “checked out as soon as possible”.
“Jonathan, even though he was a doctor, he didn’t get checked immediately, he waited until it was too late,” Thelma said.
“(The book) is about perseverance – how much can you take? How do we carry on when we’re dealing with our own internal trauma and external trauma? How do we keep all the balls in the air?
“I developed this harsh persona where I was just driving through life – and that’s where the title, I Am A Wolf Tonight, comes from.
“I had to tap into my inner wolf in order to deal with all these challenges.”
After graduating from the University of Cambridge, working as a lawyer and joining the RAF, Thelma met her husband, Jonathan, an “intelligent and talented” doctor, through a lonely hearts advertisement in The Guardian newspaper.