'I thought symptoms were menopause - what happened messed me up'

A woman has been left unable to walk after her cancer symptoms were dismissed as menopause. Karen Davey, 54, began experiencing exhaustion, hot sweats and loss of appetite - causing her to assume she was going through menopausal changes.

Following a two-week hospital stay, she received a diagnosis of stage four non-Hodgkin lymphoma in her kidneys, with a growth wrapped around her spinal cord. As a result of the spinal cord damage it caused, Karen is unable to walk and has become a full-time wheelchair user.

Karen from Launceston, Cornwall, said: "I'd gone from somebody who was quite active before. I'd do a lot of hiking across the moors, I used to go cold water swimming all year round.

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"One of the last things I did before I got ill was an abseil off a 120ft viaduct. This isn't what I'm supposed to be doing at this time of life. I've not yet been able to get back to driving or anything like that.

"I'm completely reliant on my husband, it's messed up my social life, just going out to meet friends or going swimming or popping into town to look around the shops. Emotionally, it's just completely messed me up."

In February 2024, when Karen started to feel more exhausted and sore than normal, she believed she was experiencing menopausal symptoms, but by March she had developed discomfort in her kidney. When she visited her GP, she was told she had back pain from gardening, despite only having worked for 20 minutes, well within her usual limits.

Over the following two months, her condition deteriorated rapidly. Karen had stopped eating properly, was shedding weight, developed a fever and eventually lost all feeling in her legs whilst losing control of her bladder and bowels.

Following one session of radiotherapy and six courses of chemotherapy, Karen is now in complete remission, though her tumour has left life-altering consequences. Since her return home from hospital in February 2025, Karen, who works as an administrator for an online psychiatry firm, has been forced to cut her hours to just eight per week, while her husband has had to abandon work entirely to become her full-time carer.

For Karen, the postponement in securing a diagnosis proves particularly maddening and she's determined to raise awareness of her predicament to assist others who might face something comparable.

Karen said: "I had no idea that hot flushes would lead to all this. The symptoms you've got aren't always menopause symptoms and we need to be more mindful of that."

Karen was connected with the Spinal Injuries Association during her hospital stay. The national charity assists people living with spinal cord injuries and is presently operating a women's health campaign, pushing for improved access to medical facilities for disabled women. Karen felt her symptoms were also brushed aside by her GP and remained overlooked until she was finally referred to hospital.

Dharshana Sridhar, campaigns manager at Spinal Injuries Association, said: "Karen's story is a powerful reminder that women's health symptoms should never be dismissed or explained away without proper investigation. Too often, women with spinal cord injuries face delays in diagnosis and unnecessary barriers to equitable care, leaving them to cope with life-changing consequences that could have been prevented.

"Across the board, women's concerns are frequently overlooked and when disability or other intersecting factors are involved, the barriers to timely diagnosis and treatment become even greater. Through our women's health campaign, we're calling for better awareness, earlier diagnosis, and accessible healthcare for every woman, no matter her disability."

Various studies suggest that only 20-30% of people with spinal cord injuries are women, which Karen believes has added to her struggles.

She said: "It's difficult getting information as a woman, I think because most spinal cord injuries are attributed to men. I just get annoyed that it was attributed to menopause and doing gardening when it needed looking into a bit more.

"I didn't know anything about spinal cord injury and when my toes started going tingly, it didn't occur to me that that's what it was. There's not enough information."