'Doctors blamed stomach pain on heavy periods - then I was diagnosed with terminal cancer'

'Doctors blamed stomach pain on heavy periods - then I was diagnosed with terminal cancer' Haelwyn had been troubled by stomach pain for years but doctors dismissed it as period pain, stress or IBS - but after a scan to see her unborn child, she was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer An expectant mum whose pleas about stomach pain fell on deaf ears discovered she had terminal cancer. Haelwyn Adams, 41, was excited to see her unborn child at the 20-week pregnancy scan, but she was still being troubled by pain that had "tormented" her for years. Writing in The Times, she said: "I'm 41 years old and I'm dying. I don't know how long I've got - a week, a month, a year. Nobody is talking about a decade." Medics blamed her symptoms on bad period pain, IBS, stress, or, after she and now-husband Luke started IVF, hormonal side-effects as she was young, fit and healthy. After she became pregnant and suffered another miscarriage, Haelwyn wanted doctors to perform a colonoscopy to explain her pain. But a doctor said she was "simply too young to have colon cancer" and opted for a sigmoidography in just the lower bowel. When she became pregnant again and felt pain at her 20-week scan, Haelwyn's pain was finally taken seriously. She writes: "On the way to the toilet before we left, another wave of pain threatened to knock me over. My mask of bravery slipped; I leant against the wall, sweat pouring off me, my legs shaking. "A doctor on the foetal medicine team was walking past and - just like that - I was in a bed and being sent for a scan." The scan picked up a malignant tumour in her colon with a rare mutation which had already metastasised to her liver. The mum-to-be was given a choice - abort the baby so doctors could remove the tumour and immediately begin chemotherapy. Or continue with the pregnancy while surgeons remove as much of the primary tumour as possible, which would protect the baby but dramatically reduce her own chances of survival. Haelwyn called it "the easiest decision ever". She felt pain whenever her unborn daughter kicked. Eventually, the baby was delivered at 32 weeks as she could hardly breathe with the liver tumours pressing against her lower lung. Their daughter, Magnolia Sunshine, was born before being immediately separated from her mother. She said: "From that moment, my days telescoped into a binary routine, by night, journeying into the natal intensive care unit to sit with my daughter, by day, journeying to the edge of my will to live. I had been willing to die for her, but living for her now seemed almost too hard." The new mum was briefly cancer free in January this year and she hoped the super-aggressive chemo had worked. But it returned with a vengeance in March, with tumours in both sides of her liver, and her treatment is now about management rather than cure. Her and Luke got married in June, in case she died during an operation to reverse the stoma from the colostomy she had during pregnancy. She added: "It's hard marrying someone to make them a widower but Luke is the love of my life, my person, my team-mate - and I know how strong he is. Haelwyn and Luke set up a JustGiving page, hoping to raise £150,000 to "protect my husband and little girl from the financial burden this disease leaves behind". To donate visit here.