A young woman was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma at the age of 20 – and how a suspected urinary tract infection saved her life

A suspected urinary tract infection saved Olivia Jennings’ life.

The 20-year-old battled “the flu” for a few months before she went to the doctor and was diagnosed with late-stage blood cancer.

The otherwise “perfectly healthy” young woman struggled with symptoms in the months leading up to her devastating diagnosis of Hodgkin lymphoma.

Speaking to FEMAL, Olivia explained that her symptoms started in October 2022 when she was feeling tired and exhausted. She had lower back pain and a persistent cough that she thought would eventually go away.

She also had a small bump above her left collarbone that was painful to the touch.

When she couldn’t shake the uncomfortable symptoms, the Melbourne young woman turned to her GP for answers.

A simple blood test showed her inflammation markers were high, suggesting something was wrong, so she was tested for a urinary tract infection.

“One night as I was getting ready to go out, my doctor called and said the sample had come back and indicated I had a UTI, which was odd because I had no UTI symptoms at all,” says the now 21-year-old Olivia.

“She said with those results she would normally send someone to the ER, but I didn’t want to go.” So I started antibiotics.”

The next morning she woke up sweating and ended up going to a private emergency room.

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Melbourne resident Olivia Jennings was working in retail and studying natural medicine when she was diagnosed with stage 3B Hodgkin lymphoma on January 25

As of October 2022, she felt tired, exhausted, had lower back pain, and a persistent cough that she believed would eventually go away. She also had a small bump above her left collarbone that was painful to the touch

Doctors thought she had a urinary tract infection, but a CT scan revealed she had cancer. “It was a complete shock — when he mentioned my heart, I was like, ‘This is it for me, I’m going to die,'” Olivia said

“In the ER, the doctor said he just had a kidney stone himself that only showed up on a CT scan, and he’s in pain similar to mine,” Olivia said.

While everything looked fine on the ultrasound, the doctor was keen to do a CT scan to rule out anything sinister.

The doctor came back pale and said, “It doesn’t look good.”

“He said I didn’t have a kidney stone, but I had swollen lymph nodes all over my stomach and also fluid in my heart,” she said.

“It was a complete shock — when he mentioned my heart, I was like, ‘This is it for me, I’m going to die.'” At that point, the doctors were pretty sure it was cancer.”

Olivia had to wait 45 minutes in an emergency before being transferred to a hospital where she waited 24 hours in the ward for a vacant bed.

She spent a week in the hospital where doctors performed further tests, including a biopsy, which found she had cancer in her neck, breast, abdomen and pelvis.

It was on January 25th that she was officially diagnosed with blood cancer – stage 3B Hodgkin’s lymphoma.

“I knew straight away what type of cancer it was because it was the same type of cancer that Delta Goodrem had,” she said.

“I always tell people my life feels like a movie because everything was perfect and now it kind of feels like a nightmare.”

Olivia received the devastating news in hospital, with her mother at her side. She didn’t know how to react.

“It was a strange feeling and for some reason the first thing that came to mind was ‘I never got married’, which I didn’t realize how much it meant to me,” she said.

Olivia kept the hospital in a good mood by cracking jokes.

Doctors say she was lucky when she contracted the cancer as it was about to spread further in the body.

“At first the doctors thought it was stage four, but when I started chemotherapy they confirmed it was stage 3B,” she said.

Luckily she went to the doctor as the blood cancer was about to spread to other parts of her body

A week after being told she probably had a urinary tract infection, the young woman began her first chemotherapy regimen.

“Doctors didn’t wait for me to collect eggs, they put me into temporary menopause so my eggs wouldn’t be damaged during the treatment,” she said.

“I didn’t have time to think about or process everything that was happening.”

Olivia has been in treatment for five months and has only three sessions left.

She said after the first two months the cancer was “almost gone” and she didn’t need surgery to “finish the job.”

Before the diagnosis, Olivia said she exercised four times a week, never smoked a cigarette, hardly drank alcohol and ate a healthy diet most of the time.

There was no cancer in her immediate family either.

“The doctors pretty much said it doesn’t matter what I’ve done in terms of my lifestyle, it’s just one of those things that I couldn’t have prevented,” she said.

“It’s just one of those cancers where the body just breaks down, which is pretty frustrating, but luckily I was in a good position to start chemo because I was taking such good care of my body.”

As for the side effects of the treatment, Olivia suffers from pain all over her body, fatigue, nausea, aches and hair loss.

“When my hair fell out, I really thought I’d be upset about it, but I wasn’t. “I had long blonde hair and it’s all gone,” she said.

Olivia has been undergoing treatment for the past five months and has three sessions left. And after just the first two months, the cancer was “almost gone.”

Olivia hasn’t worked or studied since she became unwell, but makes money by borrowing clothes from her closet.

She sells about 20 outfits, some of which change every week, making Olivia between $60 and $100.

“It gives me something to do and I enjoy organizing everything — I even donate some of the money to charity,” she said.

Olivia hopes her story will raise awareness of this cancer, commonly known as “the disease of young people.”