A Camberwell student is urging women to advocate for themselves after her stage four cancer was misdiagnosed as heavy periods. Heather Savage felt like she was ‘dying’ for three years before doctors finally found advanced Hodgkin’s Lymphoma – despite visiting her GP ‘most days’.
The 31-year-old was told multiple times that her symptoms – mainly severe anaemia – were nothing to worry about as her other test results had come back normal. She now feels her concerns were habitually ignored due to medical sexism.
Heather said: “I was so ill all the time – wheezing, coughing, throwing up, constant infections. I was even struggling to walk from my bed to the kitchen. And yet, they refused to investigate any further.
“If I was man with severe anaemia, I would have been listened to more. My lived experience was dismissed again and again. They essentially said it was because I’m a vegetarian who bleeds too heavily. Then it became stress, my weight – there were constant excuses.
“At one point, a GP even told me I needed to move on with my life. I hate to think what would have happened if I had.”
A turning point came in February 2021 when the artist was admitted to A&E after contracting what doctors thought was an infection in her womb. Instead, they discovered her lymphatic system was riddled with cancerous white blood cells.
Heather began 12 courses of chemotherapy that caused her to lose her hair and eyelashes. She also suffered from recurring eye infections, water retention and large, itchy rashes that made her ‘incredibly uncomfortable’.
The Forest Hill resident says the ‘horrible’ experience could have been avoided had she been taken seriously sooner. She said: “I was going to them [GPs] when it was stage 1. Had they caught it earlier, my treatment would have been shorter and less intense.
“Instead, I had to go through something that’s very invasive to the body. I was boiling hot all the time, my face swelled up, I was always bright red. I was also very self-conscious the whole time as these are all things other people can see.
“Going bald and it not being your choice is particularly hard. People talked to me in a different way. I’m glad they asked pronouns but I felt very othered – it was quite upsetting.”
Heather was forced to give up working as a freelance illustrator almost entirely and had to move back to rural Devon to shield whilst recovering from the ordeal. Normally a very sociable person, she became isolated from her friends and only had her dad, step-mum and brother’s company for the majority of nine months.
Her mum couldn’t even give her a hug as Heather was so immunocompromised that people outside her immediate bubble posed a risk. Meeting her social circle even ‘once or twice’ was more reminiscent of the Covid lockdown, consisting of masked up chats and distanced gatherings in the garden.
Having woken up in hospital yet again during this ‘difficult’ period, Heather turned to drawing to ‘stay afloat’. She began by sketching a bird for an elderly patient on her ward and soon found herself depicting her surroundings, thoughts and feelings as a way of coping.
She said: “I go to drawing instinctively anyway but hadn’t really gone to it to process emotions before. I was drawing me in the bed, what I saw and that’s how I processed. I don’t know if I’d kept sane if it wasn’t for that. It was a massive crutch to lean on.
“I feel I have PTSD now and it’s only last October that it actually hit me that it was actually me that went through that. Drawing saved my life, definitely.”
She ended up filling 26 sketchbooks and has now turned them into Drawing for Survival, a 12-chapter visual essay documenting her cancer journey. She hopes to publish the book in November following the end of her masters at Camberwell College of Arts.
Now almost four years into remission, Heather thought being accepted on to her dream university course meant her life was ‘back on track’ after spending her whole 20s ill. However, it all came tumbling down last October when she became extremely sick once again.
Doctors at first feared the cancer had returned, with Heather waiting ‘forever’ as she was referred to specialists all over again. She was diagnosed with long-term effects from chemo and is now struggling to work due to fatigue and nausea.
She is struggling to pay off her tuition fees and is facing the difficult possibility of having to drop out – putting her future on hold once again. Heather has been forced to set up a fundraiser in a last bid to achieve her goal of becoming a university lecturer and has so far raised a quarter of her ÂŁ8.5k target.
Reflecting on the last four years, Heather hopes things have changed for the better as ‘gatekeeping’ has almost cost her everything. NHS patients now have the right to choose, meaning they can pick which hospital or service they are referred to and who treats them.
Heather urged: “You know your body. If there’s something wrong then there probably is something going on so please listen to that. Don’t let doctors gaslight you.
“Reach out to people in your life. It’s okay to be ill. I felt awful talking about it all the time but If I hadn’t, I’d probably be dead.”
You can read more about Heather’s story and donate to her fundraiser on GoFundMe.
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