‘I looked pregnant but it turned out to be cancer - doctors had to take everything’
‘I looked pregnant but it turned out to be cancer - doctors had to take everything’
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In December 2022, then-33 year old Emily sought medical help when she noticed her belly was so bloated she looked 'about seven months pregnant. She was mistakenly diagnosed with constipation, gluten allergies, and stress-related gut issues. Despite following the doctors' advice, the marketing expert was not getting any better and headed to the ER near her home in Miami after the holidays as she started having issues even walking with her bloated stomach.
After an array of tests, she was informed by the doctors that a "large pelvic mass" and the fluid it was releasing was behind her swelling. The Not These Ovaries founder shared with Reach: “He says, ‘this is concerning for cancer. We need to rule it out’. And I remember saying back, ‘Okay, well let's rule it out’.
“I think part of it was like my survival tactic was to take the information at hand and move forward. When you hear something like that, it almost feels so surreal, it's not believable, it’s not real.”. She was admitted into hospital and, during her six-day wait for the surgical biopsy to remove the tumours for testing, Emily kept hearing the doctors and nurses talking among themselves about how unusual the case was, which left alarm bells ringing for her and her husband, Chris.
Emily's case was indeed unusual - she had no family history of cancer and was more than 30 years younger than most patients. According to Cancer Research UK, the peak age for ovarian cancer diagnoses in the UK is between 75 and 79 years old. Furthermore, Ovarian Cancer Action revealed that only one in three women live more than 10 years after their diagnosis in the UK. .
