Her symptoms were dismissed as haemorrhoids but Amber wouldn’t stop asking for help
A mum was told she was too young to have cancer, and doctors said blood in the toilet was from haemorrhoids. Amber Kissell, now 45, was suffering with fatigue, bowel issues, and unexplained weight loss after the birth of her second child – as well as finding blood in the toilet.
But doctors dismissed her symptoms as a fissure or haemorrhoids – and told her she was “too young” to have cancer. When she later developed dizziness, Amber went for a colonoscopy, which revealed she had stage four colon cancer which had spread to her liver and lymph nodes.
After 12 rounds of chemotherapy, her tumours disappeared, and she has remained in remission since. Amber, a clinical coordinator, said: “Things never got better. In fact, all they did was get worse. I went back a third time, I asked if he was sure I didn’t have cancer, and they said I was too young. I had a feeling it was something sinister.
“My whole world had flashed before my eyes. My children were eight and 16 months. It was like an out-of-body experience. I thought I was going to die. When I was told it had spread to my liver, I dropped the phone to the doctor and phoned my mom to say I was dying.”
After the birth of her Isabella, now nine, via C-section in November 2015, Amber was unable to use the bathroom for a week after birth and noticed blood in her stool when she did. She said she also experienced fatigue, but her primary care doctor told her she just had a fissure.
Amber said: “I could not get up in the middle of the night to take care of our baby, I felt so ill. They said the blood in my stool was because I had a fissure. When I walked past she said, ‘good job on losing 10 pounds.’ I thought it was weird as I was not trying to lose weight.”
The blood in Amber’s stool worsened, and she started to experience dizziness. She saw a colorectal surgeon who had told her it was haemorrhoids and gave her some cream. Amber’s symptoms continued to worsen. She had even asked if it was colon cancer, and was told she was “too young.”
On March 14, 2017, Amber used the restroom at work, where she had a dizzy spell and went to the hospital. On the way to the hospital, the colorectal surgeon said he would perform a colonoscopy, so Amber went home.
Two days later the results from the colonoscopy confirmed that Amber had stage four cancer which had spread to the liver and lymph nodes. Amber said: “I remember the whole thing so clearly. I then reached out to three different specialists who would treat me. I went with the first doctor I had spoken to because he was the most compassionate. He said they were going to start with aggressive chemotherapy.
“They were then going to put me on palliative care because they didn’t think they could cure me, but wanted to help improve the quality of my life.”
Amber underwent 12 rounds of chemotherapy, and scans showed the tumors in her liver and lymph nodes were gone – and the chemotherapy had shrunk her colon tumor completely. In October 2017, Amber underwent an operation to remove the scar that was left and remoced lymth nodes to test.
Amber said: “It really was a miracle, my kids were eight and 16 months. I had made buckets for them, I made journals – I was preparing them for life without me. When I got the news it was all gone I cried, it took me a long time to believe.”
Nearly nine years on, Amber is still in remission and now only needs an annual checkup with her oncologist.