Very helpful tip for the public, this. Think you’re having your period? Beware, could be uterine cancer…
> A mother whose terminal cancer went undiagnosed for several years is urging women with health concerns to demand further investigations.
>Kelly Pendry, 42, from Ewloe, Flintshire, was diagnosed with uterine leiomyosarcoma in 2021. But her initial symptoms of “heavy, prolonged periods” and “a lot of pain” began in 2016.
>Kelly wonders if things would be different if she had been diagnosed earlier. Leiomyosarcoma is a rare type of cancer which affects 600 people in the UK each year.
> The mum-of-two said when she first described her symptoms to a doctor, she was told that “your body does take a while to normalise [after pregnancy]”. She said she was advised to consider going on the contraceptive pill or have a coil fitted. Another time, she said she was prescribed anti-depressants.
>”I felt like I was a drama queen,” she said. “I felt like I was overthinking it, I felt like ‘is this in my head a bit, is this stupid?'”
> But Kelly’s condition was debilitating. “I was some days doubled over in pain”, she said. “The days I wasn’t bleeding were less than those I was. I was gaining weight without explanation. I had this really, really swollen tummy.”
Cytoreduction is offered in the UK as well but I guess the hospital doesn’t want to put the extra effort as they will be sued for negligence.
Another one for the laundry list of neglected topics in the NHS: female reproductive health.
Not that it’s a new one. The amount of women in this country that just have to put up with periods that are significantly worse than they should be and can’t have it looked into, or cannot get elective surgery to just do away with it all together because they “might want kids in the future”, is horrendous.
Last year I was bleeding for just short of 4 weeks and my periods are generally 4-5 days long so obviously it was a cause for concern for me, when I rang the GP to try get a face to face appointment for an examination the receptionist was just so dismissive and said “well an irregularly long period isn’t urgent is it” to which I replied “well it could be, that’s why I’m ringing?”
Eventually we got to the bottom of it but after losing a bit of faith.
[deleted]
There are a lot of good hcps doing amazing work and I don’t want to tar them all with the same brush.
But believe me, as a woman, the default to ‘this is painful/ debilitating/ affecting your quality of life/ distressing but you’ll just have to get on with it, this happens when you menstruate/ give birth/ reach menopause’ when you raise a problem, and the assumption that just about anything without an obvious unrelated cause is somehow linked to your having a womb and thus just *one of those things* is very real in healthcare.
Recently a friend died at 60 from colon cancer after 4 years of abdominal problems that masked the cancer. She had three different problems. It was found totally by chance by a consultant looking at two xrays years apart and got her seen straight away. It was pure chance he got her earlier xray up in error first. She was stage four by then though.
8 comments
Very helpful tip for the public, this. Think you’re having your period? Beware, could be uterine cancer…
> A mother whose terminal cancer went undiagnosed for several years is urging women with health concerns to demand further investigations.
>Kelly Pendry, 42, from Ewloe, Flintshire, was diagnosed with uterine leiomyosarcoma in 2021. But her initial symptoms of “heavy, prolonged periods” and “a lot of pain” began in 2016.
>Kelly wonders if things would be different if she had been diagnosed earlier. Leiomyosarcoma is a rare type of cancer which affects 600 people in the UK each year.
> The mum-of-two said when she first described her symptoms to a doctor, she was told that “your body does take a while to normalise [after pregnancy]”. She said she was advised to consider going on the contraceptive pill or have a coil fitted. Another time, she said she was prescribed anti-depressants.
>”I felt like I was a drama queen,” she said. “I felt like I was overthinking it, I felt like ‘is this in my head a bit, is this stupid?'”
> But Kelly’s condition was debilitating. “I was some days doubled over in pain”, she said. “The days I wasn’t bleeding were less than those I was. I was gaining weight without explanation. I had this really, really swollen tummy.”
Cytoreduction is offered in the UK as well but I guess the hospital doesn’t want to put the extra effort as they will be sued for negligence.
Another one for the laundry list of neglected topics in the NHS: female reproductive health.
Not that it’s a new one. The amount of women in this country that just have to put up with periods that are significantly worse than they should be and can’t have it looked into, or cannot get elective surgery to just do away with it all together because they “might want kids in the future”, is horrendous.
Last year I was bleeding for just short of 4 weeks and my periods are generally 4-5 days long so obviously it was a cause for concern for me, when I rang the GP to try get a face to face appointment for an examination the receptionist was just so dismissive and said “well an irregularly long period isn’t urgent is it” to which I replied “well it could be, that’s why I’m ringing?”
Eventually we got to the bottom of it but after losing a bit of faith.
[deleted]
There are a lot of good hcps doing amazing work and I don’t want to tar them all with the same brush.
But believe me, as a woman, the default to ‘this is painful/ debilitating/ affecting your quality of life/ distressing but you’ll just have to get on with it, this happens when you menstruate/ give birth/ reach menopause’ when you raise a problem, and the assumption that just about anything without an obvious unrelated cause is somehow linked to your having a womb and thus just *one of those things* is very real in healthcare.
Recently a friend died at 60 from colon cancer after 4 years of abdominal problems that masked the cancer. She had three different problems. It was found totally by chance by a consultant looking at two xrays years apart and got her seen straight away. It was pure chance he got her earlier xray up in error first. She was stage four by then though.