I was young, fit and living an amazing life until I developed a common symptom everyone has had – but five days later I found out it was stage four bowel cancer

A mother who thought she was constipated or suffering from a common abdominal illness discovered she had stage four bowel cancer at 43.

Natalie Hunter suffered stomach pains for five days, thinking it was a routine problem, but the pain soon became too unbearable and she called an ambulance.

She didn’t know that a tumor the size of a kiwi was blocking her intestine.

After a scan, the doctor came into his hospital room and gave him the worst news imaginable.

“He looked at me, held my hand and said, ‘You have bowel cancer. It’s a big tumor that has spread to your liver. “And that’s not at all what I expected to hear,” Natalie, from the Sunshine Coast, told FEMAIL.

“I thought maybe I had twisted my intestine or something, but cancer was the last thing on my mind. I said to the doctor: “Really? Is this a dream?”

The busy makeup artist and business owner, who has no family history of cancer, received the shocking news on February 15.

“It took me a while to understand what was going on and at first I didn’t want to tell anyone,” Natalie said, adding that she spoke to a social worker for 30 minutes before calling her family.

“I was constantly wondering what was happening because it didn’t seem real to me. I was just a deer in the headlights. This whole situation was a total shock to the system.

“I always thought that bowel cancer was a ‘disease of old people’, but I now know that this is not the case: cancer does not discriminate. Everyone I met with the same cancer was very young and healthy.

The next day, she was rushed to the operating room where doctors removed the tumor from her sigmoid colon. It had been growing undetected for six to twelve months.

As it was stage four cancer, doctors had to act quickly.

There were also two other tumors growing on the liver, the largest measuring 11cm.

Before her diagnosis, Natalie led a “normal, busy life,” caring for her children, exercising up to five times a week and running her small business.

She also enjoyed socializing with her friends and felt like she was living “on top of the world.”

“I lost so much work during Covid, basically a full year because weddings were canceled, but I started working in dental office administration,” she said.

Late last year she noticed a change in her bowel movements, but as it was a busy time with Christmas, New Year and her birthday festivities, she “didn’t think anything of it”.

“I thought it was just because I drank and ate too much over the festive period,” she said.

When the pain intensified, she visited her GP who gave her a colonoscopy preparation kit, which involved drinking a liter of water to clean the bowel.

But overnight it didn’t work.

“Nothing changed, so I came back the next morning and he gave me a second kit, and nothing happened,” Natalie said, adding that her stomach was bloated from all the fluid.

Walking down the hallway of the house, she waited until morning to call the ambulance so someone could check on her two children, Evie, 11, and James, 14.

“It was very difficult to leave my children and I could tell they were both worried,” she said.

“Looking back, when I was constipated, I could feel the lump in my stomach from the outside, but it was just hard stool stuck in there.”

Because the cancer had already spread to her liver, she began “aggressive” chemotherapy fairly quickly after recovering from surgery.

She had six cycles for months and by the fourth cycle, doctors said the two remaining tumors on her liver had already started to shrink.

Fortunately, she only experienced a few side effects, including hair loss, fatigue, and neuropathy.

“You couldn’t tell I’m not well just by looking at me.” For me, cancer is a bit like an invisible illness,” she said.

Last month, the mother-of-two underwent major surgery to remove 30 percent of her liver as well as the smaller tumor.

This week, she is also expected to have 50 percent of her liver removed to shrink the remaining cancerous tumor.

She will need another round of chemotherapy to “mop up” any lingering cancer cells.

In total, Natalie reportedly underwent four surgeries in seven months.

“I’m really hopeful that the surgeon can figure everything out and that I stay positive,” Natalie said.

Now, Natalie waits patiently and hopes that one day she will be free of this life-threatening cancer. She maintains a positive mindset when thinking about her children.

“I can’t leave them, they need their mother,” she said, adding: “I want to see them grow up and be there for all those special moments.

“When I was diagnosed, I was really scared and thought, ‘I have to beat this.’

The hardest part of the whole ordeal wasn’t the grueling surgeries, but rather telling her two children that she had cancer.

“Saying goodbye to my children before I was taken into the ambulance was truly heartbreaking. Watching their faces watch me leave was horrible and the fear of the unknown loomed over me. I was really scared for the future,” she said.

Today, she owns an ostomy and colostomy bag and is on a mission to encourage others to be aware of any concerning symptoms.

“When in doubt, go to the doctor and have a CT scan or colonoscopy. Keep an eye on all odds and know your body,” she said.

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