Student Who Was Told Heartburn Was From 'Boozing Too Much At Uni' Finds Out It's Cancer
A student who was told her heartburn was caused by 'too much boozing' later found out it was actually cancer she was suffering from in a shocking turn of events.
Like most of us, university student Georgia Ford enjoyed going out and drinking with her friends, so when she was told by doctors that her 'choking' cough and sickness was heartburn caused by excessive drinking, she believed them.
However, a few months later, Ford would receive a different diagnosis and her life was about to be 'turned upside down'.
The law student went to the GP in April last year, feeling unwell, and received a pretty common diagnosis from her doctor.
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"Originally the GP said the sickness was acid reflux from the amount that I was drinking because I was a student," she explained.
"They were like 'do you drink a lot?' and I was like 'yeah, obviously I do' so they put me on these stomach lining protection tablets.
"You believe what the doctor says and I thought 'I do drink a lot, and alcohol's poison isn't it, maybe it is just bothering my stomach a lot.'
"But then I came home where I'm not a big drinker and it still carried on, so I was slightly miffed as to why it wasn't just stopping."
Over the next few months, the 20-year-old's symptoms worsened and were accompanied by weight loss and back pain.
"So, when the tablets didn't work it then got put down to various other things," Ford continued.
"There was a time that they thought it was maybe an anxiety thing and it was more of a psychological symptom than actually a physical problem.
"When they said anxiety could be a contributing factor I was like 'I don't consider myself to be an anxious person to begin with and also how can this all be psychological?'
"They basically said that this was all in my head and I wasn't ill at all."
However, adamant that something else was going on, Ford said: "I fail to believe that I'm having this many severe symptoms and it's all in my head."
And she was right, as in November that year, the young student from Gloucestershire would eventually be diagnosed with papillary renal cell carcinoma, a type of kidney cancer.
"I'm five months on from starting my treatment now, but I could be further along if I'd been diagnosed earlier," she said.
"I don't know how much more ill I became in that time and whether if it had been caught a little bit earlier, my story might be a little bit different.
"It's one of those questions that I'll never know, but always wonder."
Ford set up a GoFundMe to fundraise for two charitable organisations helping her throughout her treatment.
She went on to say of her experience: "No matter what a doctor or any healthcare professional says you know your body better than anybody else.
"If you think that something's wrong and if you don't feel that what they're saying is right, like you deserve a scan or something more, you need to push and push.
"You're better off to have pushed and to know for sure that it's not cancer than to leave it and to find out that it was."
Shola Lee