A woman diagnosed with terminal bowel cancer became cancer free in a miraculous turn of events. The stage 4 cancer spread to her ovaries and liver, and doctors gave her three months to live in January 2020. Now, she’s in remission and feels grateful for a second chance at life.
Caroline Guy spent years battling health problems before being diagnosed with cancer. The 56-year-old decided to make an appointment with a doctor in June 2019 to discuss her symptoms.
“I felt sluggish, I just didn’t feel right. My stomach was swollen,” she told Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust. Unfortunately, her doctor in Spain brushed her symptoms aside, citing menopause as the cause. “I’d googled my symptoms, and I actually asked him outright if I had bowel cancer, and he said no,” Guy revealed.
When she visited her husband Adam in Saudi Arabia in January 2020, her health only worsened.
“I was in pain walking, I looked seven months pregnant, and I woke up one night and was violently sick. I just felt horrendous,” Guy recalled.
Adam and their youngest daughter Gabrielle rushed her to the hospital, where she underwent a battery of tests and X-rays. Doctors told them the devastating news that she had only 3-4 months to live.
“When I saw their faces, I thought this is not good. My daughter couldn’t look at me. I couldn’t take it in. I just said, ‘How long have I had it? And ‘am I going to die?’” she recalled.
Her family couldn’t bare to tell her the truth at the time. They could barely handle it themselves, after all.
“He was still picking our daughter up off the floor—they had to give her oxygen. I can laugh now, but it must’ve been like something from a ‘Carry On’ film,” she said.
Becoming Cancer-Free Would Be A Long Journey
At the end of January, doctors referred her to the head of oncology, who reassured her a bit. The doctors advised her to stay positive and avoid googling her symptoms. They couldn’t operate on her, so they gave her a course of chemotherapy and a targeted cancer drug, Cituximae.
At that time, COVID-19 had begun spreading around the globe, and Caroline desperately wanted to see her family. So, she traveled back to Nottingham, England, to visit her other daughter Hollie but immediately caught the virus. She self-quarantined for a couple of weeks until she felt safe to venture outside again.
“It was scary, the thought of coming back to England, worrying would I still get my treatment because I’d done so well in Saudi, but I had to come back. I had to see my family,” Guy shared.
After her bout with the virus, Guy resumed chemotherapy at Nottingham City Hospital. There, X-rays showed the tumor had decreased in size. However, doctors still gave her a grim prognosis of having only two years to live. Caroline couldn’t accept defeat and felt determined to become cancer free, though.
“I was heartbroken, I didn’t want to hear a timescale, I was doing really well, I continued with the fortnightly chemotherapy and Cituximae. I had a pump fitted, and I’d go away and have chemotherapy for 48 hours at home,” she said.
While the pandemic tore through England, Guy still made it to all her appointments. She told the NHS Trust that COVID-19 made it challenging to receive treatments but …
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