A CANCER patient spent his life savings and even planned his own funeral after being told he had terminal cancer only to find out later that the diagnosis was wrong. Phil Collins, 61, of Clovermead, Yetminster, is now suing Dorset County Hospital after going through the two-year ordeal and suffering health problems.

The former lorry driver said he was shocked to be diagnosed with advanced gall bladder cancer and told it was inoperable.

Mr Collins quit his job, planned his own funeral and spent £18,000 from a pension pay-out on fulfilling a life-long dream of buying a Triumph motorbike and buying his wife Isabel a car.

But earlier this year Mr Collins went back to hospital – where checks revealed the growth on his liver was an abscess.

Now he is claiming that complications from the cocktail of cancer drugs he was prescribed have ruined his health and he is planning a legal bid for compensation.

He said: “I was a fit man and a keen motorcyclist. I still had a lot of working life left in me. Now I cannot do anything. I am an absolute wreck.

“When they told me I had cancer I thought I was dying and I knew I had a chance to do everything I wanted.

“If you have spent two years thinking you are going to die – then you are told you are not – it knocks you backwards.”

Mr Collins first visited GPs at Yetminster Health Centre in April 2007 complaining of reduced appetite, weight loss and anaemia. He was referred to Dorset County Hospital where a CT scan revealed an abnormal gallbladder and liver and further tests confirmed suspicions that it was cancer.

His wife Isabel stopped her part-time work to become a full-time carer.

The couple, who have been married for 44 years and have no children, did not take holidays and chose to spend his last days at home in Yetminster, Dorset, together, surrounded by friends.

Mrs Collins said: “Six months came and went and we had what we thought was our last Christmas together.

“Then, in April last year it was Phil’s 60th birthday – that came and went. The doctors said, ‘You should not be here – we cannot understand this’.”

The couple insisted on more tests and in April 2009 scans revealed that Phil did not have cancer of the liver or gall-bladder.

Hospital chiefs ordered a review and doctors then said they believed the ‘malignant tumour’ was actually an abscess.

In a report, Dorset County Hospital boss Jan Bergmann apologised and said the diagnosis had been made before all the tests had been properly analysed.

Mr Collins still has a series of unexplained health problems and is currently being treated by doctors at Yeovil District Hospital in Somerset.