ONCOLOGY ISSUES: Dear ladies, don’t ignore these symptoms, it could be cancer

Salome’s* documents made me pause! As I went through her new patient’s report, I came to realise that this lady, in her 30s, had not seen a doctor for a quite long time.

It was not until last month, when she was referred to me after untreated prolonged irregular menstruation and vaginal discharge.

She was a suspect of chronic cervitis, a condition caused by infection in the cervix.

I stepped into the examination room where this lady sat expectantly in a hospital dress. After some light conversation to help her relax, I examined her by pinching off small samples of tissues from her cervix, while asking typical questions, “How long have you been experiencing this, does it hurt?”

In the process, I saw light vaginal bleeding, a common symptom of cervical cancer.

Based on what I knew from this lady, this didn’t surprise me. This didn’t mean cancer yet, we would only know after a results came back from the lab.

In most cases, women neither expect to be diagnosed with cervical cancer, nor are they aware of its risk factors and common symptoms.

I have seen a large number of women who tend to be surprised when receiving cervical cancer news and this is only due to the fact that they ignore symptoms.

Most of them confuse the symptoms with those of other common genital infections and not cancer, thus they don’t seek medical consultation on time.

Salome’s story goes on. A week later, when she returned, I was able to give her some bad or some what good news with her results.

The news was good beacuse, findings showed that her cancer was only still confined to the cervics—it hadnt spread further.

At this stage, cancer can be managed and completely cured. (Atleast salome was lucky). I then started to a prompt a treatmen plan for her.

This story reminds us of two things: that cervical cancer awareness in our societies is still somewhat a mountain to climb.

Women have no culture of getting frequent cervical cancer screening.

Cervical cancer is the leading type of cancer that claims a large number of women’s lives.

Another thing is that women tend to turn a blind eye when cervical cancer knocks in their doors, they take those cervical symptoms for granted. In most cases, it is hard to know whether the sympmtoms that women are experiencing are caused by cervical cancer, or common genital infection.

Infact, almost all cervical cancer symptoms disguise themselves as either genital infection or pelvic diseases. Salome assumed her irregular vaginal bleeding could be caused by chronic cervicitis.

I therefore urge all women to pay attention to the symptoms and seek immediate medical care. These symptoms highly include: prolonged leg pain, vaginal discharge,unusual bleeding, disconfort during urination, irregular menstrual cycle, uncomfortable sex, pelvic pain, back pain, unexplained weight loss and fatigue.