999 Critical Condition: Royal Stoke doctors save father from “ticking time bomb”

A father from Stafford, who was diagnosed with a life threatening tumour after he had a cardiac arrest is to feature in the fourth episode of the latest series of 999: Critical Condition on Thursday 27 January 2022.

54-year-old Charlie Moorhouse, a machine operator at Mec Com Fabrications, was out for a walk in February last year when he suddenly began to feel unwell. Charlie was taken to Royal Stoke University Hospital where doctors discovered he had suffered a heart attack.

Charlie said: “I had a pain in my chest and at first I thought it was a stitch. I sat down and then I started having a pain in my side and being sick. I got home and my neighbour who is a nurse came round. She took my blood pressure and called me an ambulance.”

After teams at Royal Stoke’s trauma centre performed a CT scan it was discovered a burst tumour on Charlie’s adrenal gland had caused the heart attack. Clinicians who operated on the tumour described it as “a ticking time bomb.”

Charlie continued: “I was only a little bit scared at first and I had no idea I had the tumour or how bad it was. Thankfully it wasn’t cancerous and they were able to remove it and I was discharged a few days later.

 “The night I got home I started to feel unwell again and I was ill in the night. I was able to go straight back to the ward and this time doctors found I had a tumour on my bowel.”

Clinicians operated swiftly on Charlie to remove the second tumour, which was also found to be non-cancerous. 

This week’s episode of 999: Critical Condition follows Charlie’s care as he is treated for the adrenal tumour and today Mr Anrug Golash, Consultant Urological Surgeon who treated Charlie said:  “Hormone secreting adrenal tumours are quite a challenge to operate on.

“In larger adrenal tumours, as Charlie had, often open surgery is recommended but we used a technique called hand assisted laparoscopic surgery rather than open surgery which provides all the benefits of key hole surgery, such as less pain and quicker recovery. This technique is not very commonly used in majority of centres in UK, but used quite often at UHNM, due to its specialist centre status.”

Charlie said: “I can’t fault the staff, they were excellent from start to finish, especially with all the pandemic going on. I’ve been so lucky, I can’t thank them enough.

“I’m doing 100% better now and am back at work full time.”

Charlie enjoys spending time with his wife Sarah and nine-year-old daughter Molly-Ann.