A girl who experienced unnatural menstrual bleeding and a number of pain within the abdomen for years was diagnosed with terminal uterine cancer. The U.K.-based mum-of-two is now urging other women to report their health concerns at an early stage to avoid potentially dangerous consequences.

Kelly Pendry, 42, told BBC that she began having “heavy, prolonged periods” in 2016 and it wasn’t until 2021 that doctors positively determined she had uterine leiomyosarcoma.

Leiomyosarcoma is a form of cancer that targets the graceful muscle tissues predominantly present in the digestive tract, urinary system, blood vessels, and uterus.

Pendry, of Ewloe, Flintshire, said her diagnosis was delayed as doctors failed to know what the symptoms indicated at first and advised her to pop contraceptives and even anti-depressants on the initial visits to the clinic. “Your body does take some time to normalize [after pregnancy]” Pendry recalled a physician telling her. She said, in some unspecified time in the future, she herself began to consider it was all in her mind. “I felt like I used to be a drama queen,” she told BBC. “I felt like I used to be overthinking it, I felt like ‘is that this in my head a bit, is that this silly?'”

But Pendry’s condition progressively worsened. “I used to be some days doubled over in pain”, she said. “The times I wasn’t bleeding were lower than those I used to be. I used to be gaining weight without explanation. I had this really, really swollen tummy.”

Finally, in April 2020, a locum GP first gave some serious consideration to her suffering after feeling lumps in her abdomen. “For the primary time, someone validated something,” she said. “He said, ‘How are you even coping?’ I said, ‘I’m not’.” In November of that 12 months, Pendry was diagnosed as having some noncancerous growths in her uterus and was told to undergo a hysterectomy, but her follow-up appointments were largely impeded by the pandemic and the surgery never happened.

The untreated fibroids, due to this fact, multiplied over time, and by June 2021, she was left looking like nine months pregnant and bled day by day. It was then that doctors considered the opportunity of sarcoma, however the identification of the disease was pending a lung biopsy in November 2021, by which period her cancer developed into stage 4 and terminal.

“I used to be told by a nurse to not make plans for Christmas,” she said.

Pendry said she asked an oncologist to purchase her a while in order that she doesn’t miss out on things dearly essential to her, like her children’s milestones. “I said, ‘I can not bear the considered not being around for [the children’s] milestones’, silly things like first boyfriends, girlfriends, proms. “On the time, I assumed, I’m not even going to see them go to double digits,” she said. After braving six grueling chemotherapy sessions, she got what she wanted: time.

Pendry said after almost a 12 months since she had finished treatment, she still faces unwanted effects from hormone inhibitors including tiredness, hot flushes, aches, and pains. Nevertheless, those are “nothing as compared”  to the form of pain she had before. “We’ve had stability for a 12 months,” she said, “but we all know this thing can just turn, and it may possibly turn in a short time”.

Pendry resides with stage 4 cancer, with hysterectomy not possible. “The road appears to be, my cancer is stage 4, and surgery is just not used to delay life.”

Pendry has shared her story in hopes that it enlightens others. Her husband, meanwhile, has arrange a Facebook page to lift funds for her treatment within the U.S.