For months Liz Clark had been unable to shake off a persistent cough. Antibiotics had failed and on one occasion it was so violent that the university lecturer cracked a rib.

But with no other symptoms causing her alarm, the otherwise healthy 57-year-old expected nothing more serious than pneumonia when her GP sent her for an X-ray in summer 2013.

Lung cancer wasn't even on the radar.

"I went fully expecting that the worst it would be would be pneumonia," she said. "And then I think it was 10 days later that I was phoned by the GP to come in and get the results.

"I didn't expect the devastating news that I got – I went on my own, my husband wasn't here. I never in a million years expected that it would be a tumour."

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Mrs Clark, now 62, is among those sharing her story as part of the Scottish Government's new early detection campaign, My Survivor, which highlights both the patients' own experience of overcoming the disease and what their survival means to those closest to them.

Mrs Clark, who lives in Aberdeen with her husband Iain, a retired banker, said she felt "in complete denial" at first. She had none of the common symptoms such as coughing up blood or weight loss, but a series of gruelling hospital biopsies over the following weeks confirmed it was lung cancer and in August 2013 she was admitted to Aberdeen Royal Infirmary where surgeons planned to remove the base of her right lung.

Unfortunately, the tumour proved more complex than expected and medics were forced to removed her right lung completely.

She said: “I went into surgery on the Wednesday evening and the next thing I remember is waking up on the Saturday. When the surgeon told me they’d taken away the whole lung I was in total shock."

Removing the whole lung meant Mrs Clark avoided chemotherapy since there was no sign that the cancer had spread elsewhere. But it also meant cutting short her career and taking early retirement in 2014 from Aberdeen University, where she had taught in the education department for 25 years.

"I was a professional communicator and actually it's a heck of a lot harder to communicate when you've only got one lung," she said. "I had no idea your respiratory system was so involved in day to day speaking. When you're talking, you're using a lot of your lung capacity and I have to keep taking deep breathes just to keep going.

"It became obvious that I couldn't do my job and that was obviously a big thing to get over. But I'm still alive and in a way, it's a small price to pay."

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Her husband, Iain, says he was impressed by his wife's physical resilience throughout the ordeal. Doctors expected to keep her in hospital for 10 days after surgery, but just five days later she was well enough to go home.

"Her ability to deal with the physical trauma and the subsequent discomfort and pain of the early stages of recovery was amazing really," said Mr Clark. "That was a revelation because I hadn't seen that before."

The couple, who met at university and have been married for 41 years, have two grown-up sons and four grandchildren. Five years on from his wife's bombshell diagnosis, Mr Clark says the experience has changed their approach to life for the better, including taking time for extended trips to New Zealand where one of their sons lives with his family.

He said: "When Liz went to the Maggie's Centre, she found the phrase they use – 'yesterday's history, tomorrow's a mystery, today is a gift' – really helpful. You can't do anything about the past, you can worry too much about the future and you don't know what's going to happen, so you've got today – make the most of it.

"That had a huge impact on her mental health and being able to come to terms with things. And in fact she lives her life with that adage still, five years after she had the operation, and it's rubbed off on me.

"I think whether you've got a condition or not, whether you're totally healthy at the moment or facing death, there is actually a lot to be said for it. We both tend to adopt that approach, so in some respects you learn from a very trying experience.

"Instead of thinking 'maybe I'll do that next year', you don't put things off. You do them – because you looked in the face of not being able to do them. You don't put off until tomorrow what you can do today."

For Alison Daly, a psychiatric nurse from Clydebank, the importance of early detection was brought home when her breast cancer developed from stage one to stage two in just two months while she waited for surgery.

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The married mother-of-two was diagnosed with a tumour in August 2015, just two weeks after retiring from the NHS after almost 40 years.

"She'd had lumps before and I'd gone to appointments with her, but they had always turned out to be cysts," said her daughter, Jenna Hughes, 29. "So it really knocked us for six. Luckily my Dad and I were both with her at the diagnosis."

Mrs Daly, now 58, was booked in for a lumpectomy in September followed by radiotherapy and chemotherapy, but her blood pressure was dangerously high and medics postponed the operation until November.

By that time the cancer had spread into surrounding lymph nodes and she was now stage 2.

After retiring, Mrs Daly had planned to spend time looking after her grandson, Nathaniel, then one, and doing bank shifts as a nurse. As her chemotherapy got underway, working one or two days a week in a mental health unit for older people "kept her sane".

"That was my normal," she said.

She also credits the Beatson staff for keeping her positive – "there was no doom and gloom, that's what I liked".

However, Mrs Daly said the emotional toll was harder at times for her husband and children.

"It brought us closer together, but I was also very aware of the impact it was having on Jenna and [my son] Elliot and my husband, John," she said. "He's an absolute softie and I had to be really severe with him and say 'nobody has told me I'm dying so you really need to stop this – stop looking at me as if I'm going to die tomorrow'. He really struggled with it."

Now, more than three years on, daughter Jenna is expecting her second child in 2019 and John is set to turn 50.

"That's our focus in 2019," said Mrs Daly. "My husband will be 50, Jenna is having a baby, and we have a lot to look forward to. And I continue to look forward."

Jenna says her mother is also "more spontaneous". She said: "She's always been a bit of a 'scatter-cash', but definitely more so now. If she wants to book a holiday or a trip, she'll just go for it.

"I don't take life for granted so much anymore either. It's one of those things that you always think is going to happen to someone else, so when it happens to you, you don't take things so much for granted anymore."

Not everyone feels like 'a survivor', though. Lisa Maher, 32, insists she was "just lucky".

She said: "I don't class myself as a 'survivor' – I was just lucky that the NHS offer screening programmes. Other people have been through way worse than me."

The theatre nurse, from Stepps near Glasgow, was diagnosed with cervical cancer just days after her 25th birthday following a routine smear test.

“The news was a big shock. I didn’t think I would be diagnosed with cancer, especially at such a young age,” she said.

At the time Mrs Maher and her partner, Andrew – now her husband – were trying for a baby, but the diagnosis "turned that on its head".

Her husband, Andrew Maher, said: “The first appointment was hard as the consultant was quite blunt with Lisa about the possible outcomes, which I know they have to be. I found that hard as she was a young girl, with no family, so hearing words like ‘hysterectomy’ was devastating.

“We’d just bought a house and had been trying for a baby. After her diagnosis, Lisa was pretty cut up and did struggle as we had to put thoughts of babies behind us."

Fortunately the cancer had been detected at the earliest stage – 1A1 – when it was easily treated and curable. She now has two children – a daughter, six, and two-year-old son.

She said: “I was so lucky that the cancer was caught early and I was able to have treatment to remove the cancerous cells. I was trying for a baby when I was diagnosed and it’s thanks to cervical screening and early detection that I've been able to go on and have two beautiful children. If I hadn’t gone for my smear test when I did, my story could’ve been very different."

Mr Maher added: "With every check-up there was a feeling of dread, but as time has passed, we feel so much better about things. What Lisa dealt with, and came through, has made us so grateful for what we have now.”

AS part of the My Survivor campaign, a tv advert was launched by the government last year showing people undergoing 'simple' cancer checks - such as mammograms and sending samples in the post.

The Detect Cancer Early Survivors campaign aims to illustrate that more people are surviving cancer than before, and drive home the fact that getting checked early plays a big part.

People were also encouraged to share their own stories on social media, using the #MySurvivor hashtag.

See www.facebook.com/theweec and the campaign website at www.getcheckedearly.org.

Fear of a cancer diagnosis is one of the issues that leads people to delay speaking to their doctor about symptoms. However, the Detect Cancer Early Survivors campaign is trying to drive home the message that survival rates have improved dramatically over the past 30 years, and early diagnosis is a key part.

Although the actual number of people dying from cancer in Scotland is higher than ever, that is due to Scotland's ageing population driving up incidence. Total annual cases rose by 8.4% between 2007 and 2017. However, over the same period mortality rates fell by 10% as detection and treatment improved.

Five-year survival, averaged across all ages groups, sexes and deprivation categories, has also climbed steadily in Scotland from 35% for patients diagnosed between 1987 and 1991, to 51% for those diagnosed between 2007 and 2011.

Nonetheless, UK cancer survival rates continue to lag behind other European countries where healthcare spending as a proportion of GDP is generally higher. A 2017 report by the Swedish Institute for Health Economics found that France, Denmark, Austria and Ireland were all spending more per person on cancer services than the UK, with Germany spending almost twice as much per head.

Five-year survival rates for patients diagnosed with nine of the most common cancers between 2000 and 2007 were lower in the UK than the European average. Survival rates for breast cancer were a decade behind countries including France and Sweden, the UK was second only to Bulgaria for the worst five-year survival rates for lung cancer, and on five-year survival for bowel cancer the UK rated 52% compared to 58% for the European average.

Recent figures have also highlighted the strain on Scotland's cancer diagnosis services. The percentage of patients beginning treatment within 62 days of an "urgent referral with a suspicion of cancer" has declined to an all-time low of 81.4%, far short of the 95% target. Once patients are diagnosed and a decision is taken to treat their cancer, however, the average wait is just six days and 95% of patients are waiting no more than 31 days.

This emphasises that the backlog overwhelmingly affects processes involved in diagnosis. Demand for colonoscopies to diagnose bowel cancer is far outstripping resources and in regions such as Lothian, 70% of patients are waiting longer than six weeks for an examination. Acute shortages of radiologists to analyse CT and MRI scans for tumours are another major factor behind delays, especially in the north of Scotland where more than one in five cancer patients is now waiting longer than 62 days from referral to treatment.

The Scottish Government has unveiled an £850 million plan to drive down waiting times with a deadline to meet the referral-to-treatment targets by 2021.