Car crash survivor facing new battle with cancer

A man who fought to get his life back after surviving a serious car crash decades ago has been told he has terminal cancer.

Stephen Lanza from Leek in Staffordshire suffered a fractured skull, broken back and broken legs when a car he was in crashed in 1992, but recovered to forge a career supplying ice cream for celebrity weddings all over the world.

He said he started to feel unwell in November, but assumed the pain in his back was related to his old injuries.

The news he might have just eight months to live "hit like a bomb", he said, but he is determined to stay positive.

Lanza said: "I've been through a car crash, they told me I'd never work, I'd never walk, I'd never drive, I've proved that wrong and hopefully I'm going to prove this wrong."

He had been asleep in the front passenger seat of the car when it crashed on the A500 in 1992.

He remembered waking up on the side of the road surrounded by flames, ambulances and fire crews.

But he refused to give in, and after recovering from his injuries, opened a women's boutique in Leek.

He started Lanza's Ice Cream in 2010 with a cart in the town centre, and has gone on to serve clients including Kym Marsh, Joan Collins, and Denise Welch.

When he started experiencing a pain at the bottom of his back, he did not think much of it until a masseur convinced him to see a doctor.

"When you've had a broken back and two broken legs, why would you question any niggling pain?" he said.

The news he had cancer came while he was away on holiday over Christmas.

"I just stood on my balcony, looking out at the lovely yachts, it was a sunny day, the blue sky was there and everything just stopped still," he said.

In January, a specialist gave him the news he might only have months to live and he said: "Unless you've been there you don't know, there's no words to describe it."

But he said he picked himself up, telling himself: "'I've got to turn this around somehow because if I don't, it's going to consume me'".

Lanza is due to start receiving chemotherapy from Monday and said "the show must go on".

After posting his news on social media, he said: "I didn't expect what came back, it was like a tsunami.

"I didn't realise people liked me that much."

He also said his message to anyone else was to get any health concern checked out, no matter how small it might seem.

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