Woman, 27, diagnosed with rare cancer explains symptoms after doctors suspected entirely different condition
The young woman said her cancer scans were 'lit up like a Christmas tree'
Niamh Shackleton
A young woman who went to the doctor with hip pain and bloating went on to be diagnosed with stage 4 cancer.
Tamara Mulley first sought out medical attention for the symptoms back in February 2023, with doctors going on to suggest she had 'something like endometriosis' and referred her to gyneacology.
The hospital appointment came with a 10-month wait however, and by the time it came round Tamara had become unwell in other ways. She'd developed a 'really bad cough' and was experiencing fatigue and weight loss as well.
A month later in January 2024, Tamara got the devastating news that she had stage 4 cholangiocarcinoma, also known as 'bile duct cancer', which is usually only curable in its early stages, says Cleveland Clinic.
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She said she felt 'helpless' to be told that she had 'two years to live' at the time of the diagnosis, but fortunately she has defied the odds and has so far surpassed the bleak prognosis.
With this in mind, Tamara is now wanting to share her story.
She explained she first experienced bloating when she was 16, which she told doctors about numerous times over the years. When she suddenly started experiencing hip pain and fatigue in January 2023, Tamara, who lives in London, UK, said she initially thought she had 'niggled' herself in the gym.
By the February, Tamara said she went to her doctor because the hip pain was not getting any better. This is how she said she came to start physiotherapy and get a gynaecology referral, but was not told how long the wait might be for the latter.
Over the next few months, Tamara, who is now 29, said she chased the gynea appointment 'a couple of times' while her hip pain worsened to the point she needed to go to an emergency doctor in the October to get pain relief.
Come December 2023 and the additional symptoms Tamara was experiencing were affecting her day-to-day life.
"It wasn’t until December of 2023 that I got a really bad cough and the symptoms from that really floored me, more than I’d ever been impacted by a cough before. Normally, you can get on with your life, but I was feeling really fatigued," she told PA Real Life.
"I couldn’t stand up for a long period of time at work and if I was going to someone else’s desk, I would have to sit down. And I just thought, ‘this isn’t normal’."
After telling her doctor that she was feeling breathless, she was urged to go to the emergency room. There she had an X-ray that showed a 'little shadow', so she was urged to come back for a CT scan.
After the scan, she got a phone call a few days later telling her to go into The Cancer Centre at Guy’s Hospital in London for a PET scan which ultimately showed that Tamara had cancer.
"[The scans] showed that the cancer had already spread to my hip, my spine, my collarbone, multiple tumours in my lungs and quite a large tumour in my liver, among other places," she said.
"When I saw [the scans], it lit up like a Christmas tree. It was just kind of everywhere," Tamara added.
According to the NHS, the main symptoms of cholangiocarcinoma are jaundice, itchy skin, darker pee and paler poo than usual, loss of appetite, unexplained weight loss, fatigue, and a high temperature, but Tamara only had two of these – weight loss and fatigue.
Tamara has since undergone 15 rounds of chemotherapy, but ultimately the treatment stopped working.
Now the 29-year-old is on a clinical trial called First-308, which is targeted therapy that she said 'actually started to shrink' some of her tumours.
If you’ve been affected by any of these issues and want to speak to someone in confidence, contact the American Cancer Society on 1-800-227-2345 or via their live chat feature, available 24/7 every day of the year.