Tamara Mulley had been waiting for nearly a year to find out if the bloating and hip pain which stopped her enjoying her daily life was endometriosis - but before her much-needed appointment rolled around, she discovered she had cancer.
Then aged just 27, Ms Mulley was diagnosed with stage 4 cholangiocarcinoma, also known as 'bile duct cancer', in December 2023 after a serious cough saw her referred to A&E.
'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'.'
Her GP did not have any available appointments, but when she mentioned she was feeling 'breathless', they encouraged her to go to A&E.
During this visit on a Friday night, Ms Mulley said doctors did an X-ray that revealed a 'little shadow', and they encouraged her to come back on Monday to investigate it with a CT scan.
A few days later she was asked to go into The Cancer Centre at Guy's Hospital in London for a PET scan, but staff urged her not to worry, as it did not automatically mean she had the disease.
It was around this time that Ms Mulley, who lives in London and works at Heathrow Airport, finally received an appointment with a hospital gynaecologist to investigate her suspected endometriosis - 10 months after first requesting it.
Endometriosis is a condition in which endometrial tissue - tissue similar to uterine lining - grows outside of the uterus, such as on the cervix, bladder, and ovaries, where it collects and thickens over the course of every menstrual cycle.
Symptoms include pain, heavy periods and fatigue, as well as a higher risk of infertility, and bowel and bladder problems.
Endometriosis UK estimate that 1.5 million women are currently living with endometriosis, roughly 1 in 10 women of reproductive age.
It is the second most common gynaecological condition in the UK, but it often takes sufferers over eight years to receive a diagnosis.
After choosing to focus on the ongoing investigations into the cause of her cough than the suspected endometriosis, she was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer on December 23.
'[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.'
At first, doctors were not sure where her cancer originated from so they could not come up with a treatment plan until after she underwent a lung biopsy on December 27.
Ms Mulley describes the wait between the biopsy and speaking to an oncologist as the 'hardest time' of her whole cancer journey because she felt 'quite anxious' that it would grow or get worse.
In the third week of January 2024, she found out her cancer was called cholangiocarcinoma (originating from her bile duct), it was 'incurable', and she was told 'you'll be lucky if you're sitting here in two years'.
However, Ms Mulley only had two of these - weight loss and fatigue.
In the UK, around 3,100 people are diagnosed with the disease every year, according to Cancer Research.
Just two to nine per cent of patients will live for more than five years after their diagnosis, data shows.
Patients are often diagnosed at a late stage and medics can be unaware of the treatments available, resulting in more than half of patients receiving no cancer-specific treatment at all, according to the charity.
Ms Mulley was started on a course of immunotherapy drugs, and as she responded well to an initial eight rounds of chemotherapy, it was extended to 15 rounds, which doctors told her bought her an extra six months.
After chemotherapy stopped working for Tamara, she said she is 'lucky enough' to currently be on a clinical trial called First-308, which is targeted therapy that she said 'actually started to shrink' some of her tumours.
Ms Mulley was thankful not to lose her hair, but she needed blood transfusions due to severe fatigue. Despite this, she was able to continue to still do things that she loved, like go to work to keep her mind occupied or out to dinner with friends.
She said she felt 'helpless' to be told that she had 'two years to live' in January 2024, but that beating that 'milestone' last month was a 'real moment' for her, which has motivated her to share her story.
'Passing that two-year mark was a real moment for me and one that I'm really proud of achieving,' she said.
'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. My ultimate hope is for a cure to be found.'
'I like to say that, within my bubble of unluckiness, I am the luckiest person in the world.'
'I’m so thankful for the amazing medical teams who've been in charge of my care and that I have outlived that initial expectation. My focus now is just to continue with that.'
'I always say to my doctor, you only need to keep me alive long enough for the next drug to come out, for the next discovery to be made.'
'And hopefully, if you do that enough times, at some point they're going to find a cure. I'm realistic about my situation, but I choose to remain positive.'
Ms Mulley is supported by AMMF, which is the UK's only registered charity dedicated to raising funds for research into cholangiocarcinoma.
'Too many people with cholangiocarcinoma are diagnosed (when) it's already stage four, and at that point it is too late,' she said.
'However, if it is found at stage one or stage two, it is survivable.'