She underwent eleven years of chemo for a cancer she didn’t have

At the age of 21, British Becky Jones received news that would turn her life upside down: suffering, according to her doctor, from terminal brain cancer, she would only have a few months to live. But after eleven years of chemotherapy, the young woman, now 34 years old, discovered that she had never actually had cancer.

“I was told repeatedly that without chemotherapy I would die,” Becky Jones told the BBC. Her doctor had prescribed temozolomide (TMZ), a chemotherapy drug that he said she would have to take for the rest of her life, even though recommendations call for six months of treatment.

For more than a decade, the side effects of the drug weighed heavily on her daily life: she suffered from nausea, pain, mouth ulcers and significant fatigue. For fear of infections, she also avoids social and family events. Her doctor also tells her that she will not be able to have children. She will ultimately have two, which he will describe as “miracles”.

When several tests showed no evidence of a tumor, Becky Jones began to wonder. His doctor then explained to him that it was not “visible to the naked eye”.

His treatment was finally interrupted in 2024, without any real explanation. In May 2025, after a new examination of her file by independent specialists, she learned the truth: she never had cancer. She was actually suffering from pseudotumoral demyelination, an inflammation of the brain generally treated with corticosteroids.

“I never had a brain tumor. I was misdiagnosed and put through all this treatment for most of my adult life, for no reason,” she told the BBC. About her doctor, she doesn’t mince words: “Basically, he ruined my life.”

Becky Jones is far from the only patient affected. An investigation by the Royal College of Physicians found that patients at the hospital had received prolonged TMZ treatments for years with “little or no evidence” of their effectiveness. Of the 20 files studied, the experts estimated that the management of 15 patients presented significant problems.

One patient believes the treatment made her infertile, while another developed leukemia after 100 cycles of chemotherapy deemed useless.

Becky Jones and more than 40 other patients have now taken legal action against the hospital. He claims to have strengthened the monitoring of the prescription of TMZ. Becky Jones’ doctor, now retired, did not respond to requests from the BBC.