Women turn to influencers as cancer signs signs are missed

Helen Coffey investigates why women are more at risk of having pain dismissed as everything from menopause to anxiety - and whether mistrust in medicine is leading to the surge in those seeking dangerous 'alternative' treatments

- Helen Coffey

"Woman diagnosed with stage 4 cancer after symptoms dismissed as anxiety."

"Teenager treated for 'period pain' told she has rugby ball-sized ovarian tumour."

"Athletic woman given months to live after headaches dismissed as long Covid.”

These headlines - and any number of others like them - have all appeared over the past couple of months. Symptoms and misdiagnoses may differ, but they're all variations on a theme: woman goes to doctor; woman's health concerns are dismissed; woman turns out to have cancer.

In April, Olivia Williams spoke out about the same experience. The Sixth Sense actor revealed she would never be cancer-free after doctors wrote off her cancer symptoms "for years". She visited the doctor approximately 21 times before finally being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, by which time it had spread.

"If someone had fucking well diagnosed me in the four years I'd been saying I was ill, when they told me I was menopausal or had irritable bowel syndrome or [was] crazy - I use that word advisedly because one doctor referred me for a psychiatric assessment - then one operation possibly could have cleared the whole thing and I could describe myself as cancer-free, which I cannot now ever be," she said.

Misdiagnoses happen more frequently than you might think. A 2018 report found that four out of 10 people with cancer in the UK were misdiagnosed at least once before their disease was identified. The report, commissioned by the All. Can cancer initiative, called for investment in earlier testing and screening, and warned that one in five (21 per cent) UK patients surveyed said they had waited more than six months to get the correct diagnosis. Meanwhile, 76 per cent of primary bone cancer cases in the UK had initially been misdiagnosed, according to a 2020 patient survey.