Mum diagnosed with one of the rarest cancers in the world after doctors dismissed symptoms
A mum who was told her vaginal bleeding was due to perimenopause and anxiety has since been diagnosed with a rare 'one in a billion' cancer.
In February 2024, Nicola Crymble began to experience bleeding and pain in her abdomen after having a contraceptive IUD inserted.
"I felt lethargic. I was constantly bleeding, there was so much pain," the mum-of-three recalled.
After returning home from a trip to Kenya, where she had to have the coil removed due to pain, Nicola made an appointment with her doctor, only to be told that her symptoms were 'all in [her] head' and most likely caused by the perimenopause.
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However the bleeding, swelling and pain persisted and the Northern Ireland native later found a lump in her abdomen that December.
After discovering the lump, Nicola went to her local A&E and insisted on having her symptoms properly checked out, with a scan revealing that she had a growth in her cervix.
She was then placed on a waiting list for surgery and underwent a full pelvic clearance, meaning her ovaries and fallopian tubes were removed alongside with the mass found by doctors.
Nicola then received the heartbreaking news that she had developed an extremely rare type of cancer known as FATWO.
Often referred to as FATWO, Female Adnexal Tumour of Probable Wolffian Origin, the cancer develops in the gynaecological region and is believed to be the cause of just 150 cases worldwide since its discovery in 1973.
Nicola's cancer has since metastasised to her liver and vaginal vault, which only occurs in around 17 percent of diagnosed cases. Doctors are also unable to operate due to the location, close to the heart and bowel, meaning that the 43-year-old has since been offered to give chemotherapy 'a try' despite there being no evidence to suggest that it will work.
"You're never the same after a cancer diagnosis," she, Nicola, said of her chemotherapy treatment, which began last week.
"Every ache and pain you just assume the cancer's back. The unknown is just terrifying. It's so, so scary.
Nicola will now receive six rounds of chemotherapy, one every three weeks. But she and her husband, Andrew, are desperately seeking more information about the disease.
"I was asking the doctor questions about it and they just don't know. They've never seen it before, they don't know how to treat it," Nicola's husband Andrew, a funeral director, said of the decision to speak publicly about the diagnosis.
"We just want to get Nicola's story out there in case it reaches someone that knows something about this cancer."
The family have also been dealt a second setback, after learning that an issue with Nicola's life insurance meant that she was no longer covered.
"Apparently our insurance provider had switched, and our payments hadn't gone through - but the emails had gone to spam. Now they won't cover us," Andrew explained.
"We'd been paying into that insurance for seven years, and now it was for nothing. "We appealed the decision, we went to the ombudsman, but they said there is nothing they can do.
"No one else will cover Nicola. The one thing she wanted was financial security for her little girls, and now I can't even give her that."
The family have since set up a GoFundMe, which they are using to fund further medical options as well as the opportunity for Nicola to share key memories with her children.
"It's been extremely difficult as a mother," Nicola added.
"I haven't been at the pick-ups for school, I'm not around, I'm not going to work, and they're confused. I'm trying to manage their expectations and stay brave, keeping my head above water, but it's so difficult."
You can donate to the family's GoFundMe here.
Brenna Cooper