A mother of three is told she’s “too beautiful” to be terminally ill.
Jemma McGowan, from Northern Ireland, is regularly trolled for her looks despite having cancer, saying she gets at least one hate comment a day.
“I regularly get told that I’m faking having cancer,” said the 27-year-old, despite sharing her journey on Instagram. “And there’s someone else who keeps telling me that I don’t have terminal cancer as I look too good to be ill.”
“I don’t really get upset or let it get to me as what they’re saying isn’t true,” she continued. “Strangers don’t know what they’re talking about. I feel like writing back, “What more proof do you want? Do you want my blood? If I could give it to you I would!”
McGowan was first diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 2016, at just 22 years old, while six weeks pregnant with her second child. After undergoing surgery to have it removed, doctors said it wouldn’t come back.
“I had a really bad pain on my left side,” she said. “I went to the GP and he thought I was having an ectopic pregnancy and sent me straight to A&E,” which is what the emergency room is called in Ireland.
The doctors, she continued, said the baby was fine and they needed to remove a fibroid on my ovary — but they discovered it was cancer.
“It was low-grade stage 1, so I put it behind me and continued on with my life,” she said.
For four years, McGowan didn’t experience any symptoms until she was 36 weeks pregnant with her third child and discovered a lump in January 2021.
‘I was not prepared to give up and tell my babies that I’m going to die.’
She was taken to the hospital for an MRI and to receive steroid treatment to prepare her baby for an early C section.
But 24 hours after giving birth, the doctors broke the news: her cancer was back. This time, there were tumors in her lung, pelvic and pubic bones.
“The words that stand out to me were: incurable, aggressive and acting unusually,” she said. “I started chemotherapy when Betty was just two-weeks-old but I was not prepared to give up and tell my babies that I’m going to die. I knew then I was going to fight this.”
Three rounds of two different types of chemotherapy caused her to vomit and lose her hair, but the treatment didn’t stop the tumor growth. In May 2021, the oncologist team found three more growing in her body and refused to continue treatment. They told her to “get her affairs” in order, telling her she had just three to 15 months to live.
“Chemotherapy made me very ill. It nearly killed me twice. And my tumors were growing when doctors said that it was unethical to continue,” she said, despite refusing to accept her fatal diagnosis. “They eventually offered five rounds of pain management radiotherapy, but the side effects included never having sex again, needing a bladder bag, a bile bag and major surgery.”
“Why would I put myself through five rounds for pain relief when my pain is generally not that bad?” she continued. “Plus, I’m not giving up on my sex life, I’ve given up on everything else, I need something!”
After fighting for high-dose radiotherapy, she won 20 rounds, saying she did it to see her children grow up.
“I’m not asking to be a granny, I just want to be mummy. I don’t want forever, I just want more time, so why wouldn’t I give everything a go?” she said.
Eventually, she launched a GoFundMe page to raise money for alternative therapies and care, as she discovered in Mexico at a controversial clinic, a trip that would cost her $117,000 (£90,000).
Now, she has raised over $221,000 (£170,000), which allowed her and her husband Clive to go to Mexico.
“Clive and I flew out to Mexico in June 2021, where the doctors there set me up with a protocol and, in my case, it’s all-natural supplements,” McGowan said. “I take a lot of repurposed drugs and medicines that aren’t passed by FDA so they aren’t approved or available in this country, and are in clinical trials.”
Every six months, she receives medication from Mexico, then medication from London every eight weeks. While the treatment costs $3,250 (£2,500), the fundraising, she said, “is quite literally a lifeline.”
“I recently got back from going to Mexico for the second time and it’s given me a re-boost and encouraged me to keep on track. I don’t see dying in May as an option,” she said. “My diet is also very strict — I have no sugar, no white carbs, no cow’s dairy and no meat protein. I do a lot of juicing and a lot of fasting.”
McGowan, who will appear in a new documentary with Stacey Dooley called “Stacey Dooley Sleeps Over,” is now determined to “heal herself” and live a longer life — but she’s not in total denial of the inevitable.
She’s bought future gifts for her children to open on big life milestones — such as birthdays, passing driving tests and their wedding days — and is in the process of creating memory boxes.
“I want them to remember me and know that I was thinking about them,” she said. “Clive doesn’t really want to talk about it, but he’s not much of a talker!”
Each time she tries to bring it up, she said, he changes the subject, but she’s made him promise that her children will never call anyone else “mummy.”
Despite the grim outlook on her health, she feels like she’s been given a gift.
“None of us knows what tomorrow brings. I feel like I have been given something special as I know there’s a big possibility that my days are numbered,” she said. “Someone once said to me that you could go out tomorrow and get killed in a car accident. I have something special, I know our fate so I can cherish what I have left and have time to prepare.”
Credit: Source link
