“It was so painful,” she says. “I started taking natural laxatives, which helped a little bit. The pain became more intense and when I did go, there was blood.”A further delay in an appointment to see a specialist at London’s Chelsea and Westminster Hospital resulted in a lump appearing on her left side. IT was also the point where she felt the most pain. A colonoscopy and CT scan finally revealed she had ovarian cancer. The lump was on her left ovary and it was blocking her bowels which were causing the pain. She was also told she would not be able to bear children.
At the Royal Marsden Hospital for further investigation, Rebecca was diagnosed with stage III ovarian cancer. She had a 9 cm tumor in her ovary and was administered the first stage of a six cycle chemo in July 2013. However as luck would have it, the treatment failed. Rebecca would need a complete hysterectomy that involves removing the entire womb and ovaries. She would also have to be fitted with a temporary colostomy bag since the tumor was attached to her bowel.
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When Rebecca woke up she learnt her colostomy bag was permanent. “I remember waking up in ICU and Ming was there,” Rebecca says. “He said he had bad news. The colostomy bag wasn’t temporary as they’d had to take a lot more of my bowel out. I remember being heartbroken.”
Rebecca married her boyfriend Ming Leung in April 2015. As her body accepted the fact that she would not bear children, it immediately went into menopause. After three more cycles of chemo, she was told that the cancer was finally in remission. Tragically though at Christmas she was given the bad news that the cancer had spread again to her liver, lungs, lymph nodes and pelvis. It was now in stage IV. In October 2016, she entered into a clinical trial at the Royal Marsden Hospital.
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