‘Women’s problems’ can be serious: see your doctor

Women's problems was a term I heard a lot as a child, to account for the variety of different problems my mother suffered.

All was very hush-hush and taboo but it seems that, despite the advent of feminism, secrecy still surrounds many of the aches, pains and mood swings suffered by the modern woman, too.

And this is potentially dangerous; I can cite many cases where women have treatable gynaecological conditions diagnosed only because another problem is being explored, despite the fact that they had been suffering symptoms for years. One patient had born the discomfort of heavy, painful periods since puberty until she came to me 15 years later and I discovered she had polycystic ovary syndrome. If she had known more about this relatively common woman's condition she might have been diagnosed sooner. As PCOS has implications for fertility, an early diagnosis can be helpful.

Traditionally it's men who ignore their health — women see their GPs twice as often as men — but it is becoming increasingly clear that there is an old school legacy which persuades women that if it's to do with gynaecological problems, they should grin and bear it. But irregular bleeding, pain during intercourse, spotting, discharges and skin changes are all suggestions that things may not be quite right.

I suppose this suggests that women are to blame for the rise in late diagnoses of female cancers and other gynaecological conditions because they too often assume that their symptoms are part of a wide spectrum of normal problems, and therefore not indicative of disease. The consequences of these dangerous assumptions can be fatal.

Breast cancer awareness campaigns have been very successful and it is now the case that more women die from gynaecological cancers than from breast cancers. I suspect that part of the reason for this is simply a lack of knowledge of gynaecological problems, the technicalities of which even doctors can find difficult. Ovarian cancer is the second most common kind of gynaecological cancer with nearly 7,000 women diagnosed in the UK each year — around three times the number of cases of cervical cancer.

It is difficult to spot as its symptoms are non-specific: pain, digestive problems, constipation, bloating, urinary problems, abnormal vaginal bleeding, weight gain or loss, backache, tiredness — all symptoms experienced by most women at some stage and usually ignored. But just because a complaint seems to be gynaecological or yet another "female thing" does not make it insignificant, nor should it be ignored.