Krystal Maeyke tried to ignore the stabbing pains in her stomach for months until she finally reached her ultimate pain threshold, and was dashed to hospital in the Northern Territory, Australia
A mum has been diagnosed with a terminal cancer after dismissing a sharp stabbing pain in her stomach as a sign of a food allergy.
Krystal Maeyke’s metastatic bowel cancer had already spread to other organs by the time it was diagnosed. The 39-year-old woman is now raising awareness of the key signs — common and lesser known — of cancer in order to help others.
Krystal is now worried her son Maison, 12, must now bear the brunt of “the true weight of my struggle” as it is unlikely she will overcome the disease, which has consumed her abdomen, liver, and ovaries as well as her bowel.
“The true weight of my struggle lies not in my own pain, but the potential loss for my 12-year-old son, Maison. A vulnerable child who may miss out on the love and presence of his mother. Maison witnessing the toll that this disease is and will take on me is already challenging. He yearns for my warmth, guidance, and unwavering love—a love that cancer threatens to steal away,” the mum of one wrote on a GoFundMe page.
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Krystal was blissfully unaware her stomach pains were the result of her body struggling to function under a growing network of deadly tumours. When the woman eventually reached her ultimate pain threshold, she was airlifted to hospital in the Northern Territory, Australia, and underwent a series of tests.
Previous tests had, by this stage, ruled out food allergies and so doctors became concerned. Medics discovered Krystal, then 37, had stage four terminal metastatic bowel cancer, a diagnosis which rocked the mother.
“I underwent a series of tests. That’s when I knew it was something serious. I was woken up later that night by a doctor whose words I will never forget… The weight of those words, accompanied by my question of ‘How do you know?’ and the doctor’s response, ‘It’s everywhere,’ shook me to my core,” Krystal said.
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“I thought it wasn’t anything sinister. That’s is why it became advanced cancer and spread all through my abdomen, liver, ovaries and starting from my bowel. I felt each stabbing pain, when it was spreading in my bowel with a tumour almost blocking my bowels… I felt the lump appear and was told it may just be a lymph node. That was the tumour I was feeling.”
Prior to the three months before the diagnosis, Krystal was “fit and healthy” and she has “no hereditary cancer” in her family. She continued: “I started to feel tired all day, everyday but I thought I was just a busy mum. I was having irregular bowel movements but I thought it was IBS… Never in a million years would I think that I would have this cruel disease in my body trying to kill me. Cancer hurts.”
Krystal has documented her journey to her 50,000 followers on TikTok, and has shared more details on the GoFundMe page, to which you can donate by using this link.