“I was prescribed medication but it wasn’t the right medication and I still felt like something wasn’t right. I spent a lot of my time over the past months or so walking alongside people, advocating them to advocate for themselves harder in the system. Don’t be afraid to keep questioning and pushing when you know that something is not right.”

MP Kiritapu Allan, 5 July, 2021

Popular MP Allan had been off since April having treatment for advanced cervical cancer.

(She had said before that a sense of “whakama” or embarrassment had prevented her from having regular smears. It wasn’t only the visit to the GP that caused her to ignore her cancer symptoms.)

In the head and neck cancer field, the symptoms can be ignored by patients because they mimic other things like a sore throat, a common mouth ulcer, a sinus infection, being a bit off colour.

But in numerous cases, patients have turned up at a GPs and have been given a prescription for antibiotics. A lot of us don’t want to face up to the possibility of serious illness so we tick off the trip to the GP and go back to life trying to ignore annoying symptoms like those above or unexplained toothache, a mysterious weight loss, a cough that won’t go away.

I can’t speak for cervical cancer but in the case of HNC, GPs are not experienced and might never see a case in their working life time. If you feel something is wrong, you have to push to see a specialist or ask for a second opinion. It is VERY hard to do this but it could save your life.

And in Allan’s case as in over half of HNC cases, the next generation can be spared these awful cancers by having an HPV vaccine in their pre-teen years. Cervical cancer is on track to being wiped out in Australia!

I was inspired to write this little ditty last year because I feel an urgent need to warn patients to catch cancer early.