A woman was told her symptoms were simply just ‘women’s problems’ before she found out the truth and had to have a large portion of her stomach removed.
Bella Bayliss went to A&E in January 2019 as she said she was ‘extremely anaemic’.
The now 25-year-old found she was getting ‘really breathless’ during normal activities and was ‘really pale’ while suffering from major stomach bloating.
“I had constant stomach pains,” the Gloucester woman explained. "I had lost my appetite completely, my legs were going numb, [I had] tingly hands, tingly legs.”
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However, the hospital sent her home and ‘blamed it on women’s problems'.
“I knew it wasn’t that,” Bella said, with a suspicion there was something seriously wrong with her health. And unfortunately, she was eventually given a devastating diagnosis of a rare cancer.
She had been continuing to gain weight, despite being unable to eat much.
"Whenever I would eat, I would just have a constant feeling of fullness. I was bloated. It was going on for two to three years but it got a lot worse towards the end,” Bella explained.
The transport assistant administrator went back to hospital in November 2019 when she was anaemic again.
“I had an endoscopy and that's when they found the tumour in my stomach,” she said.
A six-centimeter tumour was found in Bella’s stomach, revealing she had a gastro-intestinal stromal tumour (GIST). This is a rare form of cancer caused by a sarcoma developing in the digestive system.
"I had an operation to remove the stomach tumour and 70% of my stomach as well,” she said. "If they hadn't left me for so long I wouldn't have to have that much of my stomach removed because the tumour got bigger within that time.”
And years later, a routine scan in September showed two small liver tumours, meaning her cancer had returned.
"They said they found two shadows on my liver and I just instantly knew it was that. I had a phone call not long after saying it was my cancer and it had come back,” Bella recalled.
“At first I was shocked because after five years you think it's a part of your life you can put behind you.”
Now waiting for surgery, she says while she knows what to expect, she’s ‘extremely overwhelmed and tired’.
The initial operation left Bella struggling to eat dairy and large amounts of food with the scar also impacting her confidence.
She added that there is no medication currently available to treat this form of cancer and surgery is her only option.
"No one in my local hospital had ever heard of it before, they don't know how to treat it,” Bella said.
"It's a very complex type of cancer, what I have is so rare it doesn't react to standard chemotherapy so my tumour got sent off for testing and it got back with 85% cancer.”
If you’ve been affected by any of these issues and want to speak to someone in confidence, contact Macmillan’s Cancer Support Line on 0808 808 00 00, 8am–8pm seven days a week.
Jess Battison