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"The treatment we had from start to finish was worse than appalling and what is coming out now from the hospital and these damning reports is no surprise to me."

She was also accidentally sent a letter between surgeons describing the extent her husband's cancer had spread with one claiming "he had never seen anything like it", she said.

"I could not breathe when I saw what was written. I knew Simon was a dead man walking. It was one blunder after another with his treatment."

Mrs Bailey, 49, claims that after the operation in September her husband was effectively "starved" for more than two weeks on Colchester General Hospital's Mersea ward.

She added: "The way the hospital treated Simon was appalling. He couldn't keep anything down and this was going on for more than two weeks for them to realise he was being starved.

"It was just absolutely horrible what he went through."

He was eventually given treatment, but she made the decision to take him home at the end of September, three weeks after he was admitted.

Mrs Bailey said some of the staff had a "terrible attitude", adding: "I felt like they were trying to bully me at times, but I was not scared and I stood up to them".

She has never made an official complaint and in the past the hospital has invited her to make contact to discuss any concerns.

A spokesman for Colchester Hospital University Trust said that they had not received a complaint from Mrs Bailey. They encouraged her to get in touch so they could fully investigate her allegations.