Jayne Hardman, 56, a saleswoman from Redditch, Worcestershire, had been experiencing strange symptoms for some time. No one could find the cause. Until her dog CeCe accidentally headbutted her in the face and, unknowingly, ended up revealing something doctors had been unable to see.
It took two years for her to be diagnosed with vasculitis, a group of autoimmune diseases that inflame blood vessels and can attack entire tissues. In her case, it attacked her nose. She tried chemotherapy tablets, but it was not enough: her nose completely collapsed and she now lives with a prosthesis.
Jayne believes she is the only known person to lose her nose for this reason. And she suspects something else: that CeCe, like those dogs trained to detect Parkinson’s or cancer by smell, may have sensed the illness before anyone else. She told her story on the program ‘This Morning’ so that more people can recognize the symptoms of vasculitis in time.
