Niamh Shackleton
Warning: This article contains discussion of cancer which some readers may find distressing
A mom who is battling stage 4 cancer has shared the hidden symptoms she had before her devastating diagnosis.
Zoe Gardner-Lawson, 36, had a CT scan in October 2024, and doctors discovered that the mom-of-three had a 5cm tumour on her bowel.
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Now, Zoe - from Berkshire, UK - is on her fifth round of chemotherapy, and thinks her illness would have been caught earlier if bowel screenings were available to people in England from the age of 30.
As it stands in the UK, only those aged 54 to 74 years are invited for regular screenings.
"If my disease was caught earlier, it would’ve been easier to treat… I think the minimum age for testing needs to reduce," Zoe said.
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Zoe had initially be diagnosed with a UTI when she started feeling unwell, so was understandably shocked when she later learned that she had stage 4 bowel cancer.
Apparently she'd been living with the tumour for four years before it was found — something Zoe described as 'terrifying'.
Despite feeling 'fit and healthy' previously, Zoe began experiencing a constant dull sensation in her lower back.
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She didn’t like going to the doctor and rarely felt anxious about her health, but in August of last year, decided to book a phone appointment with her doctor.
Zoe was told she may have a UTI, and prescribed her with a week’s worth of antibiotics. When the feeling didn’t go away, she was prescribed two further doses across one month.
Recalling how she felt at the time, the 36-year-old said: "I was basically bedridden — I felt so unwell, and the back pain had spread to my abdomen, too."
Zoe had another appointment with her doctor the following month, and she was advised to go straight to the emergency room.
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Doctors checked Zoe’s symptoms and gave her a physical examination, concluding she may have kidney stones. But a CT scan confirmed this wasn’t the case and she was referred to a different department for some blood tests.
Zoe went on to demand a full body scan, which revealed that she had a perforation on her bowel and needed to be admitted, immediately.
A second opinion noticed she had a lime-sized tumour on her bowel causing the perforation, and had spread to her liver, peritoneum and stomach lymph nodes.
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“I needed emergency surgery to remove the tumour on my bowel, get rid of all the fluid and waste which seeped out, and then re-evaluate," she said.
The operation to remove as much of the tumour as possible, and the fluid, went ahead on October 3, and lasted four hours.
A biopsy revealed the tumour was a cancerous blastoma — one of the most aggressive forms of cancer — and Zoe was told she’d need to triple her chemo dosage per round.
The mother is currently on round five of eight in total.
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If you’ve been affected by any of these issues and want to speak to someone in confidence, contact the American Cancer Society on 1-800-227-2345 or via their live chat feature, available 24/7 every day of the year.