A MOTHER who was told she had six weeks to live and had made elaborate plans for her funeral had been wrongly diagnosed with cancer.

Margaret Miller, 59, was diagnosed with terminal bone cancer six weeks ago, but she has now been told she is free of the disease.

Mrs Miller said she had been to "hell and back" after being mistakenly diagnosed with the disease just two years after beating breast cancer.

She had already told her family the devastating news, had written a will and chosen hymns and flowers for her funeral.

Mrs Miller, who is now planning to take legal action, said doctors at the James Cook University Hospital, in Middlesbrough, Teesside, said her bone cancer was terminal and put her on powerful cancer drugs.

But, she said that when she went for an x-ray before the start of her radiotherapy, other doctors diagnosed osteoporosis.

Mrs Miller, from Guisborough, east Cleveland, said: "I'm now preparing an official complaint and to sue the hospital authorities.

"I'm obviously pleased I haven't got cancer, but this is appalling. I feel as if I have no faith now in the doctors."

Mrs Miller's daughter, Kathleen Ainsley, 30, who is eight months pregnant, spoke of the family's devastation at the blunder.

She said: "I'm delighted mum is not going to die, but the doctors should not have told us before they were sure. We had prepared ourselves for the worst."

A spokeswoman for South Tees Hospitals NHS Trust said: "We have not yet received an official complaint from this lady. If she gets in touch with us, we will do our best to help her."

Peter Johnson, chief officer of South Tees Community Health Council, said: "This must have been extremely harrowing for the lady concerned. Sometimes, diagnoses can be wrong. Everyone expects medicine to be an exact science and it's not, and it is practised by human beings.