Woman dying of cancer sent to osteopath by her mum, inquest told

An osteopath who saw a woman with cancer shortly before her death has told her inquest he had “never seen anything like” her case in 43 years of practice.

Paloma Shemirani, 23, who had declined chemotherapy for non-Hodgkin lymphoma, died at the Royal Sussex County Hospital last July after suffering a heart attack caused by her tumour.

Days before, she visited Nick Gosset on the instructions of her mother Kate, an online Covid conspiracy theorist who had been involved in her “treatment programme”.

Mr Gosset told the hearing in Maidstone that he felt “deeply aggrieved” to have been put in a professional position of trying to treat Paloma when there was clear advice from her GP to go to A&E.

He said that the Cambridge graduate, who was originally from Uckfield in East Sussex, had come to him complaining about shortness of breath and that he could only offer her palliative treatment at that stage as she was “clearly very ill”.

“My understanding was this was an advanced disease process that she was no longer winning,” he said on Wednesday.

“It was obvious to me I was not the right person to be treating her and I made it very clear there were more qualified agencies that would (help her).

“She was very upset by that.”

Mr Gosset said that any referral to a GP was “refused” and all suggestions of going through “normal medical channels” were “dismissed”.

He explained he would have offered to treat her again in the vain hope of possibly persuading her to seek help elsewhere, adding he had been “horrified” to learn she had subsequently died.

Also at the inquest was Linda Scotson who said she was qualified in hyperbaric oxygen therapy.

She said Paloma had not been sure she had cancer and was aiming to “improve her immediate quality of life”, after which she had claimed to feel “better in herself”.

Asked by Kate Shemirani if she had seen others in Paloma’s situation coming to her centre, Ms Scotson replied: “We have people with a whole variety of problems, such as ME, Long Covid, sprains and fractures.

“It’s amazing what a little extra oxygen can do for the body. You are lifting stress.”

Paloma’s twin brother Gabriel also asked her: “Did you explicitly tell her this will not treat her cancer?”

Ms Scotson said: “She knew it wasn’t treating her cancer in a direct way. I was treating her whole body and her wellbeing.”

When asked by Gabriel if she had left it “deliberately vague”, she replied: “I never said I was treating her cancer and she wasn’t certain that she had cancer.”

The inquest continues.