Thread by @CrazyCancerLady

@TiaTracey2 No problem, Tia, I’m always happy to try and help others avoid my fate. 🙂 The answer might take a few tweets. Well, though I didn’t know it at the time, my very first symptom was an uncomfortable and mildly painful intermittent nervy pain behind my left nipple. It wasn’t that 1/

@TiaTracey2 bad of a pain and I was only 26/27 so it’s easy to see how I ignored it. Then about a year after I first started getting those intermittent pains, my left nipple started to changed shape. It was like it was being pinched by invisible fingers. That persisted for a few months 2/

@TiaTracey2 and then my left nipple started to sink into my breast. About 4 months after I first noticed my nipple starting to change shape, I decided to visit a GP. He looked at my breast, did not even do a physical exam and fobbed me off on account of my age (28) despite my mother being 3/

@TiaTracey2 a breast cancer survivor and my paternal aunt dying of the disease. Not long after that GP visit, I noticed a hard lump in my left breast. Now this was ME being stupid. I ignored it because the GP had been so dismissive of it being cancer and didn’t get a 2nd opinion. Then 4/

@TiaTracey2 about a year after I first noticed my nipple change shape, I started to get very painful jolts of pain in my ribcage. Very painful but would only last for a minute at most. I didn’t link that pain to my breast issue. I started to get chest infections on and off around this 5/

@TiaTracey2 time too. But they tended to resolve quickly and the rib was so brief, I didn’t visit a GP. However, around a year after first experiencing the intermittent rib pain, I one day woke up in agony. My rib pain was severe and no longer intermittent. It would slightly wax and wane 6/

@TiaTracey2 but even the most mild pain was still really bad. Throughout all this, my misshapen breast remained. The rib pain was so bad that I could not clear my throat. Too painful. I started visiting GPs regularly about but was always fobbed off with insufficient painkillers. The pain 7/

@TiaTracey2 persisted and got worse. About seven months after the onset of the severe rib pain, my breathing started to deteriorate rapidly. Within a few weeks, my breathing was so bad that I could not walk 2 metres without being dangerously out of breath. Taking a flight of stairs was 8/

@TiaTracey2 excruciating and I worked on the third floor of a building with no lifts. At the same time that my breathing started to deteriorate, my left nipple started to get really bloody and pussy. It wouldn’t heal. I went to a GP and told her all my symptoms begged her to refer me to 9/

@TiaTracey2 a specialist or for scans. She said no and prescribed antibiotics. I asked to go private and she cautioned against it, saying costs would mount. I was the end of my tether. I went to A&E one night as the pain was so bad. They X-rayed me and told me my spine was misshapen. 10/

@TiaTracey2 They thought it might be scoliosis. They prescribed pregabalin for some reason and sent me on my way. I went back to the same GP practice where the crappy doctor had refused to refer me for scans. I got a different doctor who finally FINALLY knew what he was doing. He took 11/

@TiaTracey2 bloods and rang me at home, saying how concerned he was about my high white blood cell count. He also was very concerned about my terrible breathing. I hadn’t even shown him my breast. I had stopped showing doctors that because they didn’t seem to care. He took another set of 12/

@TiaTracey2 bloods which again showed a very white high blood cell count. That and my laboured breathing caused him to get me into hospital the next day for a lung CT scan where all was revealed to a very shocked pulmonologist in a hospital that doesn’t even have an oncology department. 13/

@TiaTracey2 Stage 4 breast cancer with metastases to the bones (ribs and spine) and lungs. End/