In September, 2023 Lindsay Li was excitedly picking up the keys of a new home in the suburbs.
She and her partner Fernando had just to traded life in a tiny apartment in for a big backyard in the suburbs and life couldn’t have been better.
She could never have predicted how different her life would look just 12 months later.
In August, 2024, Lindsay was writhing around on the floor of a hospital’s emergency department, dosed up on morphine and endone and in unimaginable pain after a large cancerous tumour in her stomach ruptured.
Now, instead of celebrating her second Christmas in her own home, she is battling through brutal rounds of chemotherapy, learning to live and eat without a stomach and, at her lowest, researching assisted dying retreats in Switzerland.
Speaking to FEMAIL, Lindsay shared her heartache as she described watching her life transform from wonderful to hellish in a matter of months.
The first sign something was wrong was a small amount of heartburn she suffered while moving house. She put it down to stress.
While it might have seemed minor, doctors told her the tumour was like a ‘time-bomb’ and could have been growing inside her stomach for more than seven years before it eventually ruptured.
‘It is terrifying and it has been super hard on us. Buying our first home then being unable to work. it is a lot of stress,’ she said.
Shortly after settling into their new home, the happy couple went on holiday to Korea to kick off the new year. When she wasn’t feeling any better in February she went to the GP.
Lindsay Li, centre, pictured with her father and her partner, Fernando, right. Lindsay looked and felt healthy when she was diagnosed with stomach cancer
Speaking to FEMAIL, Lindsay shared her heartache as she described watching her life transform from wonderful to hellish in a matter of months
The first sign something was wrong was a small amount of heartburn she suffered while moving house. She put it down to stress
The GP tested her breath for a common bacteria and it was found in huge quantities. Satisfied they had gotten to the bottom of the problem, Lindsay went on antibiotics.
It worked quite well but there was still some discomfort, including bloating, and further tests revealed bacteria levels had gone down but not vanished.
So she went on another round. Then another. And… then another.
By the end of her fifth round of antibiotics Lindsay was feeling even worse, with the burning at the top of her stomach, the bloating significantly worse, the onset of nausea and fatigue.
By this time the doctor believed she had some kind of stomach ulcer.
Lindsay was sick of going on endless rounds of antibiotics like she had for three months – so she went and got a second opinion.
‘I wish I had gone to another doctor after the second round of antibiotics,’ she said.
The second doctor took bloods and told her to ‘go to emergency’. Her red blood-cell count was dangerously low as were her iron levels.
Since then Lindsay has had to learn how to exist without a stomach, has lost weight, and has endured fortnightly rounds of chemotherapy with her partner by her side
After a long wait in emergency Lindsay was offered a CT scan. Doctors found irregularities and asked her to stay the night.
‘At this point I still thought it was all being caused by a stomach ulcer,’ she said.
‘But I was getting a little more worried.’ Doctors did some more tests including an endoscopy.
The next day, August 1, 2024, Lindsay’s gastro surgeon came into the room and told her she had some big news, giving her a chance to call her partner for support.
‘I didn’t want to call him, I knew I had to find out the big news myself. So I could tell him in my way. But as she said it cancer crossed my mind for the first time,’ she said.
The doctor confirmed this ‘wild thought’ and revealed things were pretty serious as the tumour was large and looked to have spread to the lymph nodes.
She says she always lived life to the fullest and will go back to that once she is better
The 39-year-old’s mum died of bowel cancer at 45. She is terrified her cancer journey will end in the same way
‘They set out a plan, they were going to do chemo to shrink the tumour, then they would know how much of the stomach to take. Then they would do more chemo,’ she said.
She was sent home to process the information and tell her partner. She called her boss who put her job on hold and her partner dropped down to a casual work load to support her and take her to appointments.
‘It was so stressful because we’d just bought a house,’ she said.
Lindsay’s mum died aged 45 from bowel cancer. Lindsay was 16.
That didn’t dampen Lindsay’s determination and she began chemo immediately.
Then, after the second round, she got home, ate two sushi rolls and fell to the floor in the most excruciating pain she had ever experienced.
Her partner rushed her to hospital as she screamed through the pain which she said felt like ‘being stabbed’ over and over again.
When she got to emergency she told them she was currently undergoing cancer treatment, but it was a busy night so she was given pain killers and told to wait her turn.
‘I remember writhing around on the floor in agony, even though they had given me morphine and endone,’ she said.
Six agonising hours later she was taken in for a scan. It revealed the tumour had ruptured inside her stomach.
‘They started rolling me down the hallway for emergency surgery. They told me they wouldn’t know what they would be doing until they got in there and asked me to sign consent forms for them to remove my entire stomach if need be,’ she said.
‘At that point I was in so much pain I would have signed anything to make it stop.’
She woke up the next day in ICU, surrounded by her family and connected to dozens of tubes.
The tumour was growing for years, according to doctors, but Lindsay didn’t even have any bloating until right before her diagnosis
‘It is all a bit foggy, but I remember the tube out of my nose and all of the things connected to my body,’ she said.
That night the epidural doctors had inserted to keep her pain under control migrated.
‘I woke up in excruciating pain but couldn’t have more medication,’ she said.
Over the next few days the young woman came to realise she didn’t have a stomach, her oesophagus had been stitched to her intestine.
Doctors took 19 lymph nodes when they removed the ruptured tumour and stomach.
Now Lindsay is back on chemo. But the impact of the drugs and her inability to digest food easily is wreaking havoc on her health.
She has dropped down to 47 kilograms, is exhausted and finds eating painful… especially in the days after chemo.
‘Everything goes straight to my intestine so I have to chew very well. I can’t have proper meals so need six to eight meals a day,’ she added.
These meals consist of something as simple as a single egg.
‘It takes about an hour to eat. If I don’t chew properly it hurts a lot more,’ she said.
‘But I can’t have soup because liquids fill me up too quickly which means I can’t eat enough.’
Lindsay is allowed a little bit of water – but not within 30 minutes of eating.
Lindsay, a foodie, now has to eat 6-8 times each day as she can only have a small portion
The first three or four days after chemotherapy are even more difficult. Lindsay suffers from hyper-sensitivity to the cold.
‘I can’t even reach into the fridge it is like having a huge electric shock,’ she said.
This means she can’t have the specially-formulated high-calorie liquid meals which are filled with vitamins and minerals and fats crucial for her survival.
Lindsay is trying to remain confident that her cancer will be gone after chemotherapy. However, cells were found in nine of her lymph nodes.
‘They will do scans once I have finished my current chemo on Christmas Day. That will show us if the cancer has spread to any more organs,’ she said.
The 39-year-old doesn’t want to die a long, slow death which is why she reached out to death clinics in Switzerland. Though, she was shocked that they cost $20,000 to use.
Her friend has started up a Go Fund Me to help the couple financially.
‘I really just want to get better. I can’t wait to go back to work and our new house and just do life. I want to keep traveling and living,’ Lindsay said.
Lindsay is sharing her story in the hopes other people get a second opinion more quickly.
‘The thing is most of the symptoms could be put down to something minor, but it is important to check,’ she said.
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