Brenna Cooper
A British mother has been told by doctors that she has just 12 months to live after her 'heartburn' symptoms turned out to be an aggressive form of cancer.
When Georgia Gardiner, from Leeds, began to experience sickness and stomach cramps last year, she made an appointment with her local GP, who prescribed the mother-of-one anti-acid reflux tablets.
However, the 28-year-old's symptoms only worsened over time, with Georgia revealing that she ended up losing nearly three stone after being unable to eat.
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"I was being sick quite a lot. I couldn't keep food down and lost my appetite completely," she recalled. "I could only eat small amounts. I love food, I'm a massive foodie. My body was just rejecting everything.
"Then I was experiencing pains in my upper stomach. It was really intense, it was a sharp constant pain."
Desperate to get to the bottom of her symptoms, Georgia visited her GP and local hospital a further 'six to nine times', only to be told she had acid reflux and to continue taking her medication.
It would take several months before she was finally referred for an endoscopy, which confirmed she had gastric cancer.
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Also known as stomach cancer, the disease causes symptoms such as heartburn, indigestion, issues swallowing and pain in the stomach.
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The results revealed that Georgia had an aggressive form of gastric cancer known as linitus plastica, a rare type of adenocarcinoma which starts in the glands that line your organs. This had also spread to her lymph nodes and into other parts of her internal organs.
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The prognosis for gastric cancer depends on the stage in which it is diagnosed and whether or not it has spread to other organs. For Georgia, her cancer is incurable and any future treatment is aimed at improving her quality of life. Doctors have also given her a prognosis of 12 months.
Revealing how her entire world 'crumbled' at the news, Georgia said: "After the first appointment, we were full of hope that they could just remove it. Then when they said it was incurable, I went into a complete shock state.
"I didn't speak or leave the house for three days, my whole world just crumbled around me."
The mum is now determined to make as many memories with her two-year-old son Arlo as possible, with the family now fundraising to cover the cost of future treatments and experiences for the family.
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Georgia is also urging others to push back against a diagnosis they don't think is correct.
"I get angry sometimes because I think if I'd been taken seriously and they'd caught it before it had spread, then maybe we could've done more to prevent it getting to the stage it's at now," she said. "I never thought I would have cancer, I'm 28, I thought I was invincible."
She added: "I'd say to other people, push for answers and don't stop. If someone else had this type of cancer and they can catch it at an earlier stage by making doctors do the correct tests, then at least I know that I've helped somebody then."
A link to the GoFundMe page is available here.