When Georgia Carter felt a pain in her right side, she thought she had torn a muscle while lifting weights at the gym, but it was actually a warning sign of something much more serious.
The pain eventually led the 44-year-old to undergo a gallbladder ultrasound, which led to a devastating diagnosis of stage four metastatic bowel cancer.
A tumor was found in his intestine along with lesions in his liver, rectum and sigmoid colon as the cancer spread.
She experienced few other symptoms but told FEMAIL that going to the toilet was never “completely satisfactory” and that she had been feeling “unwell” for months before. Looking back, she said there were also signs of blood in her stools but that this tended to coincide with her menstrual periods.
“Things weren’t going well at all. I had changed jobs and was coming from a stressful, high-pressure situation, so I attributed a lot of it to anxiety and stress,” Georgia said.
“Once I took on a new role that involved more work-life balance, the symptoms appeared and I felt confused.”
The diagnosis came as a complete shock to Georgia as she had no family history of colon cancer, although her mother had leukaemia.
The ultrasound and CT scan “discovered everything that was going on.”
Georgia Carter (pictured) was diagnosed with stage four bowel cancer 12 months ago
The 44-year-old woman from Western Australia said she experienced few common symptoms and has no family history of cancer.
The day after that gallbladder ultrasound twelve months ago, Georgia was called back for what she thought was a routine follow-up appointment.
“I thought they were going to tell me to remove my gallbladder or something. When they tell you it’s cancer, you get out of breath very quickly. It’s like an instant panic attack, a moment of hyperventilation,” she said.
‘I went to the appointment alone, so I called my husband and he dropped everything to accompany me.
“From that moment on, I understood why family doctors arrive late. I stayed there as long as it took.”
Four days later, she was in the hospital to have a port placed in her chest for chemotherapy treatment.
Bowel cancer can cause blood in the stool, a change in bowel habits and a lump in the bowel that can cause blockages. Some people also experience weight loss as a result of these symptoms.
“They couldn’t perform a proper colonoscopy because the tumor was so large it was blocking the bowel,” Georgia said.
But he did have surgery to insert a stent into his colon to reduce the risk of obstruction.
A week later, she began chemotherapy treatment, which worked well and killed the cancer cells. However, the deadly cells “broke off” from the stent and perforated her intestine, causing further problems.
“After the second round of chemo, I was in terrible pain and didn’t understand what was happening to me. Everyone said it was because of the treatment, so I just held on until I got to the point where I couldn’t eat anything or keep anything down,” Georgia said.
“I almost died, everything had stopped in my intestines and it was because my intestine had perforated and my abdominal cavity was full.”
Georgia (pictured with her husband) also “nearly died” when her intestine was perforated.
She was rushed into emergency surgery where surgeons removed a third of her bowel and the primary tumour – something Georgia described as “the silver lining” of the ordeal.
He stayed in intensive care for five days and in hospital for three weeks in August last year, then began treatment in mid-September until the end of April.
Since then, Georgia has been “regaining her strength” and three weeks ago underwent surgery to check her liver, which “was not in very good condition” due to the treatment.
“The good news is that I’m pretty sure my bowel is completely free of tumors. So the cancer is now only in my liver, but in awkward positions so doctors can’t remove it so easily,” Georgia said.
Since then, treatment has begun again to try to reduce the injuries as much as possible.
She is now taking it day by day, is “focused on getting her mindset in the right place” and will be undergoing treatment for the next six months.
Although doctors are confident that chemotherapy will shrink the remaining cancer cells, Georgia is still worried about it spreading again, but she is hoping for the best.
Her life-changing cancer means she also has to live with an ostomy bag and has had to deal with physical challenges.
Now he takes it day by day and if he concentrates on getting his mindset in the right place, he will be in treatment for the next six months.
“I’ve always been physically strong. I used to lift weights and I was the strongest woman my physical therapist worked with, which I was very proud of,” she said.
‘In the last 12 months I’ve lost 35kg and I’m no longer the strong person I used to be. I know I’m stronger in other ways, but building that strength is a really impossible mountain to climb right now.
“I refuse to let this become my personality and my illness become who I am. So I push myself. On days when I push myself harder than I think I can do, I physically exhaust myself and sleep better,” she added.
“I will never sit back and feel sorry for myself.”
To help get through tough times, Georgia remembered a mantra from a Sarah Polley book: run toward danger.
“So you confront it head on instead of trying to create mechanisms to hide it and avoid it, because you’re never going to get better, you’re never going to get stronger if you don’t confront those issues or confront what you’re going through,” Georgia said.