The mother of three was “shocked” to learn she had stage four bowel cancer after doctors initially diagnosed it as a urinary tract infection.
Zoe Gardner-Lawson, 36, began feeling persistent pain in her lower back in August 2024. Before the pain started, she felt “fit and healthy.”
This feeling prompted her to schedule a phone appointment with her doctor, who prescribed five days of antibiotics for a suspected urinary tract infection.
Two more courses of antibiotics were given over the next month because the pain did not go away.
“There was no change at all. And by the third dose, I got really bad,” she said. “I was basically bedridden. I felt very sick and the pain in my back spread to my abdomen.”
On September 19, Gardner-Lawson saw her doctor again, but the doctor advised her to go straight to the emergency room.
Doctors initially suspected kidney stones after reviewing her symptoms and performing a physical exam. However, a CT scan ruled out that possibility, and he was ordered to undergo blood tests.
“My blood was tested for an infection marker called creatine-reactive protein,” Gardner-Lawson said. “They were elevated to 364 n/mol. The normal range for women is 52.9 n/mol and 91.9 n/mol.”
When the general surgeon came to examine her, he noted that there appeared to be fluid in her abdomen. At that point, Gardner-Lawson insisted on undergoing a full body scan.
She had a CT scan and an hour later another consultant told her she had a perforated intestine and needed to be admitted to hospital immediately.
A second opinion in October revealed that there was a 5cm lime-sized tumor in his intestine that was causing the perforation. The cancer had spread to the liver, peritoneum, and stomach lymph nodes.
Gardner-Lawson was taken to the Cleveland Clinic in London for further treatment, where Murray proposed a treatment plan.
“I needed emergency surgery to remove the tumor in my intestine, remove all the fluid and waste that had seeped out, and re-examine it,” she said.
The surgery lasted four hours on October 3, with the aim of removing as much tumor and fluid as possible.
A subsequent biopsy confirmed that the tumor was a carcinomatoma, one of the most aggressive types of cancer. Gardner-Lawson was told her chemotherapy dose would need to be tripled.
“I've endured just like everyone else. It's pretty hardcore,” she said. “I'm participating in 5 out of 8 total rounds. Each round uses 3 different chemotherapy drugs.”
In addition to chemotherapy, Gardner-Lawson enrolled in a naturopathic clinic and received guidance on diet, exercise, vitamin C drips and mistletoe injections.
“I basically took the approach of throwing it in the kitchen sink and improving the prognosis as much as possible,” Gardner-Lawson said. gofundme to fund her alternative treatment.
She believes that if she had had a fecal immunochemical test (FIT) sooner, doctors could have discovered her cancer years ago.
She advocates lowering the minimum age for colorectal cancer screening to “at least 30,” if not 25.
For now, her prognosis remains uncertain, with doctors waiting to see if the tumor will shrink in response to chemotherapy.
“The plan is that after I get my sixth round of chemotherapy, they expect me to have a good response,” Gardner-Lawson said. “Everything is going well, so I have to book a second surgery to remove the remaining lymph nodes in my stomach and two tumors in my liver.”
Gardner-Lawson hopes the minimum age for colon cancer screening will eventually be lowered to “at least” 30.
“If my disease had been discovered earlier, it would have been easier to treat…I think we need to lower the minimum age for testing,” said Gardner Lawson, human resources manager at Berkshire UK. Ta.
“Professor Jamie Murphy said I could have been living with this tumor for up to four years before being diagnosed, which is terrifying,” she said. “If all goes well, there is still a chance to achieve ‘no evidence of disease’ status, but it all depends on the next few years.”
