The drover’s wife

The registrar called about her first consultation as a trainee oncologist. The “case” was a 69-year-old previously well woman (let's call her Tracey) from a semirural setting, who had gone to bed, one week ago, as normal, and had then woken up to find she was having difficulty holding her coffee mug. Within 24 hours she was intubated, ventilated and transferred to a metropolitan centre. A week later she had been diagnosed with a severe demyelinating polyneuropathy and metastatic squamous cell cancer of the lung.