"I thought I had a bad case of thrush - it turned out to be rare vulval cancer" - video Dailymotion

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A woman was diagnosed with stage three vulval cancer - after thinking she just had a bad case of thrush.  Pippa Sharp, 49, found she was experiencing recurring thrush in August 2022 - causing a sore, hard spot on her left labia.   She was prescribed antibiotics by her GP - but four days later, realised the spot wasn’t going away.   Her doctor referred her for a biopsy which initially revealed stage one vulval cancer, but a scan later showed it had spread to the lymph nodes in her groin.   Pippa, from Leeds, UK, wants people to know more about the deadly disease, so they can catch it at an earlier stage than she did.

Transcript

00:00Hi I'm Pippa, I live in Leeds and I have vulva cancer. I use my other social media platforms

00:07to talk about this disease but decided I wanted to get out there even more using TikTok. So

00:12I'm going to start at what is a vulva. Men probably won't know what this is and scarily

00:18a lot of women don't know what this is. So basically it's your inner and outer lips of

00:23your vagina, your clitoris, the opening of your vagina and its glands, the opening of

00:28your urethra, so that's basically what you pee out of, your menis pubis, mons pubis even,

00:37which is the rounded area in front of the pubic bone, so this is the area that normally

00:40gets covered in hair after puberty. And like I say it's amazing how many women don't know

00:45what this is, even some women in the NHS don't know what this is. So I, throughout the latter

00:53half of 2022, was getting a lot of thrush infections. One ended up getting me into

01:01my GP because it was so bad, who took great care of me and who continue to do. And I developed

01:09a sore spot on the inside of my left lip, down there. This can be embarrassing to talk

01:17about but I really don't have any dignity where this is concerned anymore. And it just

01:23didn't seem to go away and over time I kept thinking this is maybe where the thrush is

01:27coming from. I was then diagnosed as diabetic which is why I was getting the thrush infections

01:34and was put on medication and the infections stopped but this soreness had turned into

01:39a lump which was getting quite sore. So on my first, one of my meetings with my diabetes

01:45nurse I mentioned it and she noticed I had an appointment with the doctor a couple of

01:49days later so extended it. Went to see the doctor, she took a little look at me and she

01:55looked at me through the big infections that I'd had and they normally say oh it could be

02:01this thing or it could be something else. I was told you've either got an infected cyst

02:06or you've got cancer. I knew very well it was cancer because the antibiotics that she gave

02:12me I'd had a few weeks previous for a chest infection but I thought no give it a go. Four

02:17or five days into taking the antibiotics I realised that they hadn't done anything so

02:23it was definitely the cancer. Went back to the doctors and they referred me to the hospital.

02:31That was on a Wednesday. The following Tuesday I was at the hospital which is the St James

02:36Hospital in Leeds. It's also the Yorkshire Cancer Centre which is incredible. Very lucky to have this

02:43like six miles away from my house and when I had biopsies they said there and then it looks like

02:50early stage indicative vulva cancer. I was like fine I'm not going to lie to you it was not a

02:55pleasant experience. The injections down there you have a lot of nerve endings it's a very sensitive

03:01area. Did the biopsies, said they'd be in touch. I then went to meet my consultant and by this

03:09point I already knew it was cancer. I'd been through some of the emotions, put my big girl

03:14pants on and was like let's just do this. Then I went to see the consultant which is Mr

03:22Nugent who is amazing. He's incredibly meticulous, very thorough and just a very very good guy.

03:31He said to me yep it's early stage cancer and what we'll need to do is remove, I think they

03:37removed about 70 to 80 percent of my left labia, so my left lip. I was put into surgery a few

03:44weeks later, well in fact a week and a half later so I had a lot of running around to get stuff

03:50organised. Had the surgery and then went on to try and recover. Now I'm going to do these videos in a

03:59bit of a series because it's going to take a while to get through everything, so I'm just

04:03going to talk about my first experience with everything in this video. So I had the surgery

04:11which was actually not too bad. I spent a week in hospital, so I came down with an infection,

04:18went through all the recovery. I had to have district nurses coming out because I had

04:22lymph nodes taken out, I had a drain in my stomach. Back in hospital a few times I say

04:27with infections, not sure if I've mentioned that already. I'm not used to doing videos so bear with

04:32me. Once I got through all of that, went back and got all my final results because what they do is

04:41they send all the tissue off to make sure they've got really good margins etc and obviously the

04:45lymph nodes as well. Unfortunately it was found in one of the lymph nodes, in fact it was in two

04:51but it was encapsulated within those two so it had not spread further from those. So it was decided I

04:56would need treatment. So long story short, ended up having 25 radiotherapy sessions with five chemo.

05:06So the radiotherapy was every day Monday to Friday and the chemo was every Wednesday and then

05:15was told that I would be on three month check-ups which would just be a physical examination

05:20for two years and then on to six months for the remainder of my life because

05:25vulva cancer is actually quite a rare cancer, it only affects 1 in 300 women in the UK.

"I thought I had a bad case of thrush - it turned out to be rare vulval cancer"

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