A mum of three who thought she was experiencing stomach pains due to a car crash was instead told it was an aggressive form of cancer.
“Life just stopped,” said Samantha Bovingdon, from Craigmore in Adelaide’s north, when she was told of the diagnosis.
Last year, Ms Bovingdon wrote off her car when she ran into the rear of another motorist.
Unsurprisingly, the crash left her with aches and pains.
A pain in her stomach, which she put down to the crash, would not go away however and eventually the 43-year-old went to her doctor.
What they found wasn’t residual muscle pain. It was a 20cm cyst attached to her ovaries that had the hallmarks of ovarian cancer.
Ms Bovingdon, who is mum to daughters Dakota, Darcy and Dayna with husband Ivan, had surgery to remove the cyst and underwent a full hysterectomy in November.
But her medical issues went far deeper than that. Doctors discovered that Ms Bovingdon didn’t have ovarian cancer – she had stage four bowel cancer.
And it had spread to her liver, her lungs and her stomach.
“What’s going to be done, how do we get rid of it?” Ms Bovingdon asked doctors, reported The Advertiser.
Five year survival rates for bowel cancer vary. Overall survival rates have increased from 54.7 per cent to almost 71 per cent between 1990 and 2019, states Bowel Cancer Australia.
But that depends on the stage the cancer is at, how treatable it is and the patient.
Almost everyone diagnosed with stage 1 bowel cancer, where the cancer is isolated to the inner lining of the bowel, can survive for five years or more.
Prognosis rates from stage 4, where the cancer has spread to other organs, are lower but in some cases surgery can improve the prognosis.
‘Horrible disease’
Ms Bovingdon has finished her second round of chemotherapy.
“I’m currently stuck in hospital … it’s been really hard,” she told The Advertiser.
“What could’ve been done to have caught it earlier? How long have I had it? Where did it come from? Why wasn’t my body not telling me something wasn’t right? Why did it wait till then? What was going on? All of that goes through your mind,” Ms Bovingdon said.
She has called for early testing of bowel cancer.
Ms Bovingdon, a project controller, hasn’t been able to work since her hysterectomy in November while her husband has had to take time off to care from their three children.
Ms Bovingdon’s friend Tammy Taylor has set up an online fundraising page for the fame who she said were struggling.
“It’s enough to have to deal with cancer and having to do chemo let alone worrying about how you’re going to pay your bills, school fees, sports, medication and anything else that pops up in between,” Ms Taylor said on the fundraising page.
“I would like to try make life a little easier while she fights this horrible disease”.