When Krystal Maeyke began experiencing sharp stabbing pains in her stomach, she shrugged them off as a food allergy.
For three months she tried to ignore the increasingly uncomfortable sensations in her lower abdomen, gritting her teeth as they grew in intensity from a light pinch to so severe she was brought to her knees in agony.
The mother-of-one, then aged just 37, was blissfully unaware that she was living with late stage bowel cancer, and the pains which were plaguing her life was her body struggling to function under a growing network of deadly tumours.
She explained: ‘At first I thought I would get checked for food intolerances. As I was fit and healthy, exercising daily and eating a wholesome balanced diet.
‘Tests came back negative to gluten intolerance. But the pain continued. Some days I would be in agony and have to keep a heat pack on it.’
But eventually she reached her ultimate pain threshold, and on May 30 2023 she was airlifted from her remote home in the Australian desert town of Yulara, in the Northern Territory, to the nearest hospital 280miles (450km) away.
Mid-air, she was given morphine—’which did nothing’—before nurses administered potent painkiller Fentanyl which ‘began to calm the severe pain’.
At Alice Springs Hospital she was given a series of tests before being given the devastating news that she had cancer.
Krystal Maeyke found out she had stage 4 cancer at the age of just 37
The mum-of-one just put down her stomach pains to a food allergy, but it was a tumour
She said: ‘I underwent a series of tests. That’s when I knew it was something serious. I was woken up later that night by a doctor whose words I will never forget
‘”Krystal, I’ve got bad news…. You have cancer.”
‘The weight of those words, accompanied by my question of “How do you know?” and the doctor’s response, “It’s everywhere,” shook me to my core.’
Ms Maeyke was told that she has stage four terminal metastatic bowel cancer, which means that the initial cancer from her bowel had spread to other organs.
And she’s convinced that the shooting pains she felt was the cancer taking over her body.
She said: ‘I thought it wasn’t anything sinister. That’s is why it became advanced cancer and spread all through my abdomen, liver, ovaries and starting from my bowel.
‘I felt each stabbing pain, when it was spreading in my bowel with a tumour almost blocking my bowels.
‘I felt the lump appear and was told it may just be a lymph node. That was the tumour I was feeling.
Ms Maekye and her son Maison, who she has started a GoFundMe to support during this time
‘And as it spread during that time, I felt it reach my ovaries as the stabbing pains continued.
‘Never in a million years would I think that I would have this cruel disease in my body trying to kill me. Cancer hurts.’
In the three months before she was airlifted to hospital, Ms Maeyke—who was ‘fit and healthy’ and has ‘no hereditary cancer’ in her family—experienced other symptoms which can signal cancer.
‘I started to feel tired all day, everyday but I thought I was just a busy mum. I was having irregular bowel movements but I thought it was IBS.
‘I was having night sweats but I thought it was the summer heat,’ she said.
She has also urged people to take night sweats seriously, and to seek medical advice if they are ongoing and extreme like hers were.
‘Looking back now, I was experiencing persistent night sweats a few months before I was diagnosed.
‘I would wake up during the night drenched in sweat, enough so I had to change clothes and sheets. And some nights it would happen a few times.
The mum-of-one was fit and healthy when she was diagnosed with the disease
Bowel cancer can cause you to have blood in your poo, a change in bowel habit, a lump inside your bowel which can cause an obstructions. Some people also suffer with weight loss a s a result of these symptoms
‘It was summer time and I slept with the air con on and a fan, so I just thought it was my air con not keeping up with the summer heat. So I ignored this sign.
‘The relationship between night sweats and cancer is unclear. However, researchers believe multiple factors may be involved.
‘Your body’s fight against cancer is one of them. Another is changes in hormone levels caused by the cancer and your body’s response.’
Ms Maeyke, now 39, has been bravely sharing her ongoing battle against cancer on TikTok, informing her 50,000 followers of some of the key signs—common and lesser known—of cancer, and the steps doctors have taken to try and extend her life.
She has also spoken openly about the hardest part of her situation, the welfare and future of her son, Maison.
In a GoFundMe she set up to try and create a financial cushion for her family during her illness and beyond, she wrote: ‘The true weight of my struggle lies not in my own pain, but the potential loss for my 12-year-old son, Maison.
‘A vulnerable child who may miss out on the love and presence of his mother. Maison witnessing the toll that this disease is and will take on me is already challenging. He yearns for my warmth, guidance, and unwavering love—a love that cancer threatens to steal away.’
A recent global study found rates of bowel cancer in under 50 year-olds are rising in 27 of 50 nations.
Ms Maeyke has been undergoing cancer treatment since her May 2023 diagnosis
She has been sharing her story with her 50,000 TikTok followers
England is averaging a 3.6 per cent rise in younger adults every year – one of the highest increases recorded, with roughly 2 per cent rise among young people in the US.
While the disease is known to be linked to obesity, experts have noted that it also seems to be occurring in fit and healthy patients.
Some believe the explanation must lie in environmental factors young people have been exposed to more than previous generations, such as plastics and even pollution.
Signs of bowel cancer include abdominal pain, a lump in the abdomen, bloating and feeling very tired or short of breath.
Bleeding from the back passage, or blood in the stool, occurs when cancerous tumours bleed into the digestive tract.
However, bowel cancer can also appear with no symptoms until it has spread, where it becomes harder to treat.
Overall, just over half of bowel cancer patients are expected to be alive 10 years after their diagnosis.
But cancers of all types are on the rise in young people.
In a landmark study, Cancer Research UK examined 50 years of NHS data and found that the risk of developing cancer has risen sharply, particularly among young people.
In this demographic diagnoses had risen by up to 23 per cent in people aged 20 to 49.
Researchers are still trying to explore factors being the rise in early onset cancers, with some suggesting modern diets, exposures to microplastics, or a combination of several triggers could be to blame.