A woman has been left unable to walk after her spinal cancer symptoms were mistaken for signs of the menopause and a gardening injury.
Karen Davey, 54, from Cornwall, began experiencing hot flushes, fatigue, and loss of appetite in early 2024, but she assumed these were menopause symptoms.
But by March 2024, she developed pain in her kidneys and went to visit her GP. However, she was told the back pain was due to gardening, despite having only done 20 minutes of this.
Over the next two months, her symptoms worsened and she stopped eating properly, lost weight, and developed a temperature, later losing all sensation in her legs and as well as bladder and bowel function. After being taken to the hospital and admitted for two weeks, she was given the devastating news that she had stage four non-Hodgkin lymphoma in her kidneys, and a tumour wrapped around her spinal cord.
After one round of radiotherapy and further chemotherapy, she is now in remission. However, she has been left unable to walk.
The “life-changing” impacts of the cancer have meant she has to reduce her working hours to four a week, while her husband has given up work to be a full-time carer.
Ms Davey told the Spinal Injuries Association she felt her symptoms were “dismissed” by her GP and continued to be dismissed until she was admitted to hospital.
She said: “I’d gone from somebody who was quite active before. I’d do a lot of hiking across the moors, I used to go cold-water swimming all year round. One of the last things I did before I got ill was an abseil off a 120-foot viaduct.
“This isn’t what I’m supposed to be doing at this time of life. I’ve not yet been able to get back to driving or anything like that. I’m completely reliant on my husband; it’s messed up my social life, just going out to meet friends or going swimming or popping into town to look around the shops. Emotionally, it’s just completely messed me up.”
Ms Davey said she wanted to spread awareness of her situation and help others who might be experiencing similar symptoms.
She said, “I had no idea that hot flushes would lead to all this. The symptoms you’ve got aren’t always menopause symptoms, and we need to be more mindful of that.
“I just get annoyed that it was attributed to menopause and doing gardening when it needed looking into a bit more. I didn’t know anything about spinal cord injury and when my toes started going tingly, it didn’t occur to me that that’s what it was. There’s not enough information.”
Spinal Injuries Association supports people living with spinal cord injuries. Dharshana Sridhar, campaigns manager at the association, said: “Karen’s story is a powerful reminder that women’s health symptoms should never be dismissed or explained away without proper investigation.
“Too often, women with spinal cord injuries face delays in diagnosis and unnecessary barriers to equitable care, leaving them to cope with life-changing consequences that could have been prevented. Across the board, women’s concerns are frequently overlooked and when disability or other intersecting factors are involved, the barriers to timely diagnosis and treatment become even greater. Through our women’s health campaign, we’re calling for better awareness, earlier diagnosis, and accessible healthcare for every woman, no matter her disability.”
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