Mushroom cook discusses split with estranged husband Simon as evidence on fatal Victorian lunch continues

In the witness box, Erin Patterson occasionally grins and fiddles with her hands.

Her lawyer, Colin Mandy, SC, has moved to a new line of questioning: Patterson’s health history.

Patterson said she had never been diagnosed with ovarian cancer or had a biopsy on her elbow, but she confirmed she had raised concerns with doctors that she might have cancer.

“I’d been having for a few months a multitude of symptoms. I felt very fatigued, I had ongoing abdominal pain, I had chronic headaches. I put on a lot of weight in quite a short period of time … my feet and my hands seemed to retain a lot of fluid,” she said.

Patterson said that what sent her “over the edge” to go to the doctor was that her wedding ring would no longer fit. She said she had the ring resized, but it did not fit again within a short period. “I consulted with Dr Google,” she said.

“I had a family history of it [ovarian cancer] on both sides of my parents. I’d had an ovarian cyst myself in about 2002 and my daughter had an ovarian mass when she was a baby.”

Patterson said her daughter would cry for long periods of time, so she took the child to doctors, who told her she was an “overanxious mother” and she should relax. “She was eight months old by the time it was actually diagnosed,” she said of her daughter’s ovarian mass.

Patterson said she discovered the mass while massaging her daughter’s abdomen after a bath in August 2013.

“They still dismissed me, even then. They thought she just had a very full bladder,” the accused said.

But the lump remained.

It was that experience, that moment, Patterson said, that considerably damaged her faith in the health system.

Patterson said she didn’t like hospitals before, but the experience made her distrust health professionals. “I didn’t want to lose her,” she said.

She said the experience also played a part when she discharged herself from hospital in January 2015. “I didn’t want to be there,” she said.

Patterson said that after the removal of the mass from her daughter’s ovary, the girl continued to have ongoing pain and gastrointestinal issues. “She got to a point where she was four and they finally did an X-ray on her which showed that she was completely backed up,” Patterson said.

Patterson said the experience was distressing for her daughter. “She’s 11 and she still remembers that.”