I thank my female GP and the Covid jab for saving my life 🙏🙏🙏 I had seen her once or twice to renew anxiety prescriptions while my GP of over 15 years had been winding down towards retirement.

I was burnt out at work after a big promotion. Working long hours. Not sleeping enough. Not exercising enough. Not eating healthily enough of the time. Stressed by office and family politics. Putting on weight and miserable about that too. A long fall for someone who had been super fit and looked after her health and body. I wasn’t in a great place, but kept pushing through because my clients and my team depended on me.

I had my second Covid jab and didn’t feel well. I was worried I might have pericarditis but it didn’t seem severe so i was just on alert. Then one evening soon after (after shivering terribly and feeling breathless at work) I vomitted all over the bed. I was so so ill. Within a couple of hours after lying down I was fine again, just bone tired. It propelled me to see my GP the next day, grabbing a cancellation late in the afternoon.

After telling her all this, and after discounting pericarditis, she got me up on the bed for an examination. I can’t remember when THAT last happened!!! She found a big mass in my abdomen in the area around my ovaries. Within a week I’d had an ultrasound, chosen a top surgeon with her help, been booked into see the surgeon, had a CT scan and had had debulking surgery which in part removed a 30 cm mass and included a radical hysterectomy. It took 3 months after surgery for the hospital peer group finally to determine I had stage 4 rare appendix cancer.

My body had not been able to fight the cancer growing aggressively inside me as well as deal with getting the Covid jabs.

Without her bothering to get her hands on me, the mass would have been missed.

She’s a wonderful, thorough doctor. She’s always on the front foot. I’ve had a range of tests ordered by her (on top of those ordered by my male oncologist) now I have finished chemo and am coming up to 3 years in remission - including heart and bone density tests. I also have various referrals from her to a nutritionist, cancer therapist etc.