A woman shared that she was stuck on an NHS waitlist for nearly a year after informing her GP that she was experiencing bloating and hip pain. When the appointment finally came around, she was told she had just two years to live.

A woman has revealed her prolonged struggle on an NHS waiting list before receiving a devastating diagnosis. After nearly a year of waiting, she was informed she had just two years to live.

Tamara Mulley, 27 at the time, initially reported symptoms of bloating and hip pain to her general practitioner. Suspecting endometriosis, doctors referred her to a gynaecologist in February 2023. However, by December of that year, her health took a turn for the worse as she developed a “really bad cough,” alongside fatigue and unexplained weight loss.

In January 2024, Ms. Mulley received the shocking news: she was suffering from stage 4 cholangiocarcinoma, a rare form of bile duct cancer. The diagnosis left her feeling “helpless” upon being told she might only have two years left to live.

Reflecting on her medical history, Ms. Mulley, now 29, shared that she had experienced bloating since she was 16, and had repeatedly mentioned it to her doctor throughout the years.

Her symptoms escalated in January 2023 with hip pain and fatigue, initially dismissing them as potential gym-related injuries. By February, she sought further medical advice, pursuing physiotherapy and a gynaecology referral as her hip pain persisted.

She said: “It wasn’t until December of 2023 that I got a really bad cough and the symptoms from that really floored me, more than I’d ever been impacted by a cough before.”

“Normally, you can get on with your life, but I was feeling really fatigued. I couldn’t stand up for a long period of time at work and if I was going to someone else’s desk, I would have to sit down. And I just thought, ‘this isn’t normal’.”

After an X-ray revealed a “little shadow”, she was told to come back for a CT scan, which at that point she “started to think that this could be something like cancer”.

A few days later, Ms Mulley received a phone call in which she was told to go to The Cancer Centre at Guy’s Hospital in London for a PET scan, but was urged not to worry.

It was around this time that she said she was finally due to have her gynaecology hospital appointment, 10 months after first requesting it. However, she decided to continue with her ongoing medical investigations instead.

On December 23, Tamara said she got her stage 4 cancer diagnosis.

She said: “[The scans] showed that the cancer had already spread to my hip, my spine, my collarbone, multiple tumours in my lungs and quite a large tumour in my liver, among other places.

“When I saw [the scans], it lit up like a Christmas tree. It was just kind of everywhere.”

Doctors were not sure where her cancer originated from and, therefore, were unable to come up with a treatment plan until she had a lung biopsy on December 27, and then got results in the third week of January 2024. She described the wait as the “hardest time” of the whole cancer journey, as she felt “anxious” that it would grow or worsen.

It was during the January appointment that she found out she had cholangiocarcinoma, which originated from her bile duct and was “incurable”. She claims she was told, “You’ll be lucky if you’re sitting here in two years”.

Fortunately, Ms Mulley, who works at Heathrow Airport, responded well to chemotherapy, which was extended from eight to 15 rounds. According to doctors, the treatment bought her an extra six months.

The chemo stopped working for her, but she was able to enrol in a clinical trial called First-308, which has “actually started to shrink” some of her tumour.

Now, outliving her prognosis, she said: “Passing that two-year mark was a real moment for me and one that I’m really proud of achieving.

“It goes to show that, although there’s still a huge amount of work to be done with cholangiocarcinoma – because it’s under researched and underfunded – there is hope.”

The 29-year-old added that “ultimate hope is for a cure to be found”, and despite the “unluckiness” she is “the luckiest person in the world”.

Tamara is supported by AMMF, the UK’s only registered charity dedicated to raising funds for research into cholangiocarcinoma.

She attended the charity’s annual conference in 2025, where she shared her diagnosis and treatment story. She will also be travelling to the House of Commons with AMMF to meet MPs and NHS leaders at a Rethink Liver Cancer meeting on February 25.

According to data published by NHS England’s National Disease Registration Service, two-thirds of patients with cholangiocarcinoma in England do not receive any cancer treatment.

Ms Mulley said: “I’m really passionate that anyone who gets diagnosed with this in the future is not essentially handed a death sentence, and that they are given an opportunity to access the right treatment at the right time, to give them the best possible outlook.”