A young woman who visited her doctor complaining of hip pain and bloating later learned she had stage 4 cancer.
Tamara Mulley first asked for medical help in February 2023. At the time, she says doctors suggested it was ‘something like endometriosis’ and she was referred to gynaecology.
However, the hospital appointment involved a 10-month wait. As the months passed, Tamara’s health worsened in new ways — she developed a ‘really bad cough’ and began dealing with fatigue and weight loss too.
In January 2024 — around a month after those additional symptoms intensified — Tamara was told she had stage 4 cholangiocarcinoma, also known as ‘bile duct cancer’. Cleveland Clinic notes the disease is typically only curable when found early.
She said she felt ‘helpless’ after being told she had ‘two years to live’ when she was diagnosed. Despite that prognosis, she has so far lived beyond the timeline she was given.
Now, Tamara wants to talk publicly about what happened, in the hope her experience may help others.
She explained that bloating started when she was 16, and she raised it with doctors repeatedly over the years. Then, in January 2023, she began experiencing hip pain and fatigue. Living in London, UK, she initially believed she had simply ‘niggled’ herself during a gym session.
By February, the hip pain hadn’t improved, so she booked a GP appointment. She says that led to physiotherapy and a referral to gynaecology — though she wasn’t warned how long the specialist wait could be.
In the months that followed, Tamara — now 29 — said she followed up on the gynaecology appointment ‘a couple of times’ as the pain continued to worsen. By October, she needed an emergency doctor visit to get pain relief.
By December 2023, her symptoms were affecting everyday life, particularly after her cough became severe.
“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’.”
When she later told her doctor she was feeling breathless, she was advised to go to the emergency room. There, an X-ray identified a ‘little shadow’, and she was asked to return for a CT scan.
After the CT scan, Tamara received a phone call a few days later instructing her to attend The Cancer Centre at Guy’s Hospital in London for a PET scan. The results ultimately confirmed she 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.
The NHS lists the main symptoms of cholangiocarcinoma as jaundice, itchy skin, darker pee and paler poo than usual, loss of appetite, unexplained weight loss, fatigue, and a high temperature. Tamara said she only experienced two of those symptoms — weight loss and fatigue.
She has since gone through 15 rounds of chemotherapy, though the treatment eventually stopped being effective.
Now, she is taking part in a clinical trial called First-308, a targeted therapy 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.