Mom thought her symptom was perimenopause it was a rare sign of cancer

Nicola Crymble, a 43-year-old mom, was in constant pain.She was bleeding and experiencing swelling around her abdomen for months, while doctors told her it was caused by perimenopause and anxiety.“They told me it was all fine and that it was all in my head,” she told Talk to the Press.But it wasn’t — while doctors dismissed her symptoms, an extraordinarily rare tumor was growing in her abdomen.By the time the mass was removed, cancer had spread to her liver and vaginal vault, making further surgery impossible.Now, as she undergoes chemotherapy, Crymble is desperately searching for answers about a disease so rare that only 150 cases have ever been documented worldwide.After getting a copper IUD, a hormone-free birth control, she started experiencing pain and bleeding.“I was doing mission work in Kenya at the time and had to have the coil removed out there,” she said.But the symptoms persisted when she got home to Northern Ireland, and doctors pointed to perimenopause, the start of menopause, and anxiety.By December 2024, ten months later, things had only gotten worse.“I was constantly bleeding, there was so much pain,” she said.“I decided, right, I can’t take this anymore.

I was rubbing my stomach and then I felt something.”The lump grew so large she “couldn’t even zip my jacket up … People thought I was pregnant.”Again, doctors waved it off, saying it was constipation, she said.“But I knew it wasn’t.”A scan then revealed a growth near her cervix.

“They told me it was probably just a cyst or something and that they’d remove it by Christmas and everything would be fine,” she said.She waited until February 2025 to get the mass removed, and decided to remove her ovaries and fallopian tubes.“I just said to them, if you’re going to open me up, remove everything that needs to be removed,” Crymble said.It was another month before she finally found out what she had: Female adnexal tumors of probable Wolffian origin, or FATWO...