A YOUNG mum begged her GP to see her face-to-face for months, before being diagnosed with cervical cancer.
Sophie Butterworth, 30, had symptoms for 15 months before she was given the devastating news.
Although she was late to get her first smear due to living abroad, she still had a delay of five months when back in the UK due to the pandemic.
She was left in severe pain and displaying symptoms for months, as she asked to be seen in person.
The mum-of-one first rang her doctor surgery in June 2020, complaining of abnormal bleeding.
A blood test was done, which found higher inflammation markers, but no follow up was done, the mum says.
She then began to suffer with cramping and unusual discharge, but was given antibiotics when she asked for a physical examination.
Sophie said she has found out since that due to her symptoms, she should have been referred to a gynaecologist immediately.
But instead she was told to book a smear test, which kept being cancelled.
In March this year, Sophie contacted her GP again and described feeling "generally unwell".
She told the Manchester Evening News: "I have an eight-year-old daughter and I am used to being very active. I just felt irritable and lethargic all the time.
"In July I finally had my smear test done. It took seven weeks for the results to come back.
"I knew something was really wrong. I was asked to send off some swabs to the doctors and they said it looked like an infection and gave me more antibiotics.
"At this point I was crying down the phone begging to be physically examined but I wasn’t."
After getting her results back as abnormal, Sophie said things moved faster.
She said: "This is the only point things started to get investigated – not because of any of my symptoms.
"I went for an appointment and I was told not to worry. Then the clinician looked at my cervix and it all went very serious.
'BEGGED FOR APPOINTMENTS'
"She told me she was very concerned that I could have cancer and referred me for an MRI that same afternoon."
The mum was then told she had stage three cervical cancer on a phonecall in September.
Sophie has since been informed the cancer has spread to her lymph nodes, and she is about to undergo a seven-week intense course of radiotherapy and chemotherapy.
She won't be able to see her eight-year-old daughter and may not be out by Christmas.
She is now about to be checked into a hospital in Manchester for an intense seven-week course of radiotherapy and chemotherapy to treat the cancer.
It comes as last week the Government said patients will be able to demand face-to-face appointments.
Surgeries which fail to do so will soon be named and shamed in new league tables.
The NHS cash injection of £250 million was announced last week amid rising anger that people can’t get in-person appointments.
But GP Dr Jess Harvey said the plan did not highlight "real world problems" within the NHS.
And Dr Amir Khan said a “chronic shortage” of both funding and GPs is the reason behind fewer face-to-face appointments.
He told Good Morning Britain: “We've got to make sure they point the finger at the right people.
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