Mum with a year to live issues chilling heartburn warning

A previously ‘fit-and-healthy’, mother has shared her anguish after what doctors repeatedly dismissed as heartburn turned out to be incurable stomach cancer.

Georgia Gardiner, 28, from Leeds in West Yorkshire, has now been told she may have as little as a year to live.

She was eventually diagnosed with linitis plastica—a rare and aggressive form of stomach cancer—on June 13.

The disease has already spread to the tissues surrounding the internal organs close to the stomach as well the lymph nodes near her lungs, meaning it’s in the advanced— and final—stages. 

She said she is angry medics didn’t take her initial symptoms, which included stomach pain, seriously.

The mother-of-one says if they had, her cancer may have been spotted earlier in a potentially more treatable stage. 

Ms Gardiner’s heartbreaking ordeal began when she suddenly started having stomach pains so severe that she ‘couldn’t keep food down’.

As her condition worsened, the former ‘massive foodie’ lost her appetite completely. 

‘My body was just rejecting everything. Then I was experiencing pains in my upper stomach. It was really intense, it was a sharp constant pain,’ she recalled.

Despite going back and forth to her doctors ‘six and nine’ times, she kept getting told it was related to heartburn and was given basic anti-acid reflux medication.

It wasn’t until months later when she was finally referred for an endoscopy, which involves a camera being put down the throat, to investigate the problem.

This showed worrying signs that she may have stomach cancer.  

Further tests confirmed she had disease and that it had already spread to the other organs.

This meant the disease was already at stage-four, the final and most serious stage. 

Medics then told her she may only have a year to live—which she said left her in ‘complete shock’.

‘I said, “am I going to die? I can’t die, I have a two-year-old son”. My fiancé Callum just went green,’ she said. 

‘When they said it was incurable, I went into a complete shock state. I didn’t speak or leave the house for three days—my whole world just crumbled,’ she said. 

The keen horse rider—who had been previously ‘fit-and-healthy’— said she had no idea why she had developed stomach cancer, having no family history of the disease. 

She is now urging others to always push their GP for action if they experience worrying symptoms.  

‘If someone else had this type of cancer and they can catch it at an earlier stage by making doctors do the correct tests, then at least I know that I’ve helped somebody then,’ she said. 

Ms Gardiner said she is now focusing on trying to spend as much time as possible with her son Arlo while she can. 

‘The thing that breaks me is how much I’m going to miss out on Arlo’s life. He’s everything to me,’ she said.

While she and Callum had planned to get married in a couple of years the couple are now rushing this forward. 

A fundraiser has been launched to help pay for any future treatment and making memories with her family. 

About 6,500 patients in Britain and 30,000 in the US are diagnosed with stomach cancer each year.

The disease kills about 4,000 Britons and 11,000 Americans per annum.

While stomach cancer can develop at any age, it is far more common among older adults.

Just half (49 per cent) of all cases of the disease diagnosed each year are among the over 75s.  

If caught in its earliest stages, the majority of stomach cancer patients (65 per cent) will survive a decade after their diagnosis according to charity Cancer Research UK.

However, for stage four patients, 10-year survival drops to just one in five.

The deadly disease is preventable in over half of cases with potential cause including smoking and obesity.

Symptoms of stomach cancer include heartburn or acid reflex, problems swallowing, nausea, vomiting, burping, and feeling full very quickly after eating.

Others include loss of appetite, unintentional weight loss, a lump on your tummy, a pain on the top of your tummy, and fatigue. 

It comes amid an explosion of cancers in young people, which has baffled experts.

In 2023, a US study found that cancers of all types were on the rise for younger women—but curiously not men.

While for women they increased overall by more than four per cent, for young men there was a dip of almost five per cent.