Sophie Zenonos, a gym fanatic from Basildon, Essex, claims doctors “fobbed her off” with antibiotics when she first experienced shortness of breath, a persistent cough and fatigue
A young woman who had a continuous cough and became so ill she couldn’t get upstairs without gasping for air was eventually diagnosed with cancer.
When Sophie Zenonos, 28, also experienced shortness of breath and fatigue, she visited her GP only to allegedly be “fobbed off” with antibiotics on three occasions. On each occasion, doctors told Sophie she had a chest infection but, five months later, one coughing fit was so bad Sophie turned blue.
The gym fanatic was sent for an X-ray which revealed there was a six-inch by four-inch tumour in her chest and that Sophie had stage four Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma. Now, Sophie says she has been left “frustrated” that the blood cancer diagnosis had been missed by doctors for so long.
Sophie, a marketing officer, said today: “The shortness of breath was the main symptom, I was really struggling to breath. I couldn’t walk up a flight of stairs without needing to stop and take a minute, which for someone who was in the gym multiple times a week is quite unusual.
“I was constantly fobbed off by the GP and by A&E… I ended up having a coughing fit to the point where I turned blue and my mum was like ‘we need to get this sorted now’.”
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Sophie, from Basildon, Essex, underwent six rounds of chemotherapy and 20 sessions of radiotherapy between June 2020 and December 2020. In May 2021, she received the all-clear for blood cancer.
But the woman’s breathlessness in 2020 became so severe that she struggled to walk up a flight of stairs without taking a break — despite being active and working out at the gym three days a week. Sophie was so concerned with doctors’ response she is now urging other people who think there’s something wrong with their body to “persevere” and push for a second opinion.
“I was frustrated that it had taken so long to get a diagnosis and as time went on a lot of anger did build up. I was shocked that it was something so serious and that it had taken so long to get to this point but I was also relieved as well because I had an answer,” the marketing professional continued.
“I went to the GP and they sent me for a chest x-ray. The tumour was 15cm by 11cm in my chest, which is massive. It all just went from zero to one hundred after that.”
Sophie overcame blood cancer but, in May 2023, the young woman received more heartbreaking news when she was diagnosed with thyroid cancer. Sophie said: “I had swollen lymph nodes in my neck for a while, which wouldn’t go down.
“I thought maybe I was just run down or that I had a cold. They did a biopsy and told me there and then that it didn’t look like lymphoma, but it looked like thyroid cancer.
“In February 2024 I had surgery to remove my thyroid and the surrounding lymph nodes in my neck where the cancer had spread to were removed as well.
“I’m at the point now where the lymph nodes are still cancerous because the treatment didn’t remove it all. They aren’t getting bigger so at the moment they’re treating it as stable and the doctors are working out what the next steps are.”
Sophie is now urging other people who have a ‘gut feeling’ that something is wrong with their body to seek a second opinion from doctors.
Sophie said: “You’ve got to persevere with it. I’m so in tune with my body now that I know when any little thing is different or when something changes.
“If you’re young and to the eye look kind of well and healthy but you’ve got that gut feeling that something could be wrong then you’ve got to seek that second opinion and persevere. Obviously the sooner you get diagnosed the better the outcome. I got diagnosed so late and now my quality of life isn’t the greatest.”
