Cancer daughter's asbestos plight

Mandy Kaminskas and her husband Ray remarried at the hospice

A woman has been told she has weeks to live after being diagnosed with cancer caused by exposure to asbestos through close contact to her father.

Mandy Kaminskas' father was a construction worker and as a girl she would cuddle him when he returned home, his clothes covered in asbestos dust.

Ms Kaminskas, 47, of Swansea, who has two daughters, has mesothelioma, a type of lung cancer.

Her solicitor said it showed not just former asbestos workers were at risk.

Ms Kaminskas had been told by doctors it could have taken years for the cancer to appear.

"My dad worked with asbestos and I've got this illness because of the close contact I had with him when I was young," she said.

She is now campaigning for other victims of mesothelioma.

It most often affects the lining of the lungs and about nine out of 10 cases are linked to exposure to asbestos.

'Time-bomb'

"People are surprised when they hear how I contracted this disease," Ms Kaminskas added.

"But there are many other people in similar positions who have received secondary exposure.

"I want people to know what having this cancer really means and how dangerous secondary exposure is.

"Telling my two daughters I am dying was one of the most difficult things I've ever had to do.

"I wouldn't wish that experience on my worst enemy. Looking into your child's eyes, and telling them you won't be around, is unbelievably hard."

Ms Kaminskas, of Ynysforgan recently remarried her first husband Ray in a ceremony at the hospice where she is being treated.

"Ray and I remained good friends even after the divorce. Last July, I took a turn for the worse, I was fitting and very unwell and the doctors didn't think I would make it," she said.

Ms Kaminskas was awarded an undisclosed sum by the father's employers

"Ray asked me to move back in with him and he became my main carer. A couple of weeks ago, I became very ill again, and doctors told me they didn't think I had long left.

"I said to Ray: "How do you fancy making an honest woman of me?" He said yes and we were married at the hospice. It was the best day of my life."

She is one of five children but she is the only one to have been diagnosed with the disease.

She has since been awarded an undisclosed sum by the construction company her father worked for up until his death 30 years ago.

Her solicitor Julian Cason of Russell Jones and Walker in Swansea said: "Mandy's case shows that not only are former asbestos workers are at risk.

"Their families and loved ones are also unwittingly snared by asbestos-related disease - often decades after the original exposure took place.

"Despite Mandy's undoubted strength and bravery, her plight shows the devastation that the asbestos ticking time-bomb can still bring."

Although the use of asbestos was banned in the UK in 1999, it is predicted that 65,000 people will develop mesothelioma as a result of previous exposure.