After two years of misdiagnoses by GPs and A&E doctors, one phone call with her local pharmacist finally lead student Lucy Younger to a lifesaving brain tumour diagnosis, she told C+D last week (September 26).
Younger’s “bizarre” symptoms, which included seeing “pink elephants” in lectures and “smelling bacon” despite her being vegetarian, started when she began as a university student in 2018.
Her GP’s initial advice was: “You're drinking too much, you need to stop partying," she told C+D.
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Younger took the advice “but the symptoms carried on” – “I was in a lecture, and I remember telling my friend ‘There are literally pink elephants in this lecture hall’,” she said.
But when she returned to her GP, they told her she was “depressed” and “anxious” due to being “away from home” – “they tried to medicate me with anti-depressants and anxiety tablets,” she added.
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As her symptoms got “worse” she “never had a scan or anything," and the GP "just kept telling me that it was lifestyle issues or hormonal issues,” she told C+D.
Younger eventually went to A&E after having a seizure, where she told a doctor that she thought she had a brain tumour.
But Younger was “sent home” – the A&E doctor’s “exact words were ‘a girl of your age would not have a brain tumor’,” she said.
“This ordeal is over”
Feeling “desperate”, Younger said that her mother suggested she ring a pharmacist – “it's worth a shot,” she said.
Younger was “crying down the phone” when she rang an “incredible pharmacist” – “I gave him all of my symptoms, and he was like, this is not right,” she told C+D.
She said that the pharmacist recognised the symptoms as temporal lobe seizures, having had patients with epilepsy in the past.
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The pharmacist told Younger he would “take this further”, and “get in contact with a GP and advise” that they saw her “as an emergency patient”.
This time, the GP sent her “straight away” for an MRI scan “and then within half an hour I was diagnosed with a brain tumor,” she said.
“It was two years later and honestly, before I was even upset I was relieved” – “this ordeal is over,” she added.
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Younger had to take a year out of university to recover from neurosurgery – “I had to re-learn how to walk,” she told C+D.
Now 24, Younger has graduated from her undergraduate degree, completed a master’s and begun a career in journalism.
“Respect our pharmacists”
“I think my mum having that having the idea to ring the pharmacist was just genius” – “He literally saved my life,” she told C+D
He “made sure that [Younger] was seen, asked if [she] was okay” and made sure that she “was all okay on the medication”, she said.
“I grew up in small towns, so the pharmacist was always the first port of call,” she added.
“If more people utilised pharmacists in that way, the outcomes would be incredible,” she said.
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“I think we need to definitely respect our pharmacists more” – “they get so much abuse for things that are out of their control,” Younger told C+D.
She stressed that pharmacists should “definitely keep trying to have those conversations with [their] patients when [they] can” and keep “an eye out for those symptoms, and especially in younger people”.
