Rebecca Readshaw, 35 years old, spent six months travelling around India and came back to her home in Britain only to find out that she inadvertently caught Giardia, which is a parasitic infection that occurs in the digestive system, the Mirror reports.
Readshaw said, “He told me that as I already had IBS and my intestines had had a bit of a battering from the parasite, I probably would be quite sore.”
Readshaw had been under constant intake of antibiotics since then incident. Then, she realized that the stomach pain and the drastic change in bowel habits were telling a rather bigger condition: ovarian cancer.
Professor Sean Kehoe, chief medical adviser for Ovacome, said, “It’s a challenge for family doctors to pick up that the symptoms could signal ovarian cancer, and they will want to rule out less sinister possibilities first.”
Readshaw said, “It was so painful. I started taking natural laxatives, which helped a little bit. The pain became more intense and when I did go, there was blood.”
Readshaw was referred to a specialist at London’s Chelsea and Westminster Hospital by her General Practitioner. She went through a colonoscopy, an MRI scan, and a CT scan just to discover that she has ovarian cancer.
She added, “By this point I had a little lump appearing on the left side of my stomach and I could feel it was where I was getting the pain, which I told the consultant.”
Readshaw called her boyfriend, Ming Yeung and broke to him the sad news.
Readshaw said, “I sat there blinking in shock. The nurse said, ‘You’ve got a lump on your left ovary and it’s blocking your bowel, that’s why you’ve got so much pain.’ I was also told I wouldn’t be able to have children.”
Readshaw and Yeung married in April 2015. They both had accepted the fact that she’ll never bear any children and she would be menopausal since then.
Readshaw said, “It works by turning off the growth signal in cancer cells. I’ve researched it and women in America have got on really well with it. I know it won’t cure me and I do think about death. I’ve asked how long I could live, but doctors can’t tell me. I try not to think about the future too much and just focus on each milestone, like getting married.”
She continued, “Now I understand more about ovarian cancer. I know there is a non-intrusive blood test my GP could have done to rule out anything sinister. If any women reading this have persistent symptoms, I urge them to go and see their GP.”
Readshaw discovered that her cancer reached stage four and it spread to her liver, lymph nodes, and pelvis. She won’t have a lot of days to live.
