Eimi Kelly’s first date with the man she now lives with was not your typical Tinder encounter.
“Right, I’ve got a few things to tell you,” she said before they had ordered drinks. “I beat cancer, I’m going through the menopause, I can’t have kids and I’ve got a bowel disease. Is that alright with you?”
Luckily it was and 28-year-old Eimi describes Ciaran as “the best person ever.” Now her bowel problems are so bad that she has opted for a stoma bag and is on the waiting list for an operation this year.
But Eimi and Ciaran are still together and talking about marriage and possibly adopting a child.
In the 10 years since Glaswegian Eimi first experienced abdominal pain, she has lost both ovaries, her appendix, some pelvic muscle and the lymph nodes around her internal organs.
Removing her cancerous ovaries thrust her straight into the menopause at age 19 and she still has the occasional hot flush. The emergency surgery left her with pelvic adhesions that have distorted her intestines so badly that she is in constant pain and struggles to control her bowels.
But despite a decade of health horrors, she makes constant jokes about her situation. “If someone tells me to put something in the bin, I will always say, ‘Just like my ovaries.’” Her fundraising hashtag is #teamnaeovaries.
When Eimi first went to the doctor with period-like pain on her left-hand side, she was an 18-year-old finishing school, looking forward to university. Despite constant visits, her GP could not get to the root of the problem.
Eimi said: “She thought it was an infection, then endometriosis. I was over-exaggerating and being a grumpy teenager.” Next Eimi complained of feeling apathetic, snappy and tired. Her GP said it was “a wee bit of anxiety and depression.”
When Eimi Googled her symptoms, the internet diagnosed ovarian cancer. She knew this was unlikely at 18 but remembered advice from Teenage Cancer Trust when they came to her school.
She said: “They stressed the best thing you can do when you’re young is to advocate for yourself as you are not going to be listened to.”
Finally Eimi, who had now started a business degree at Strathclyde University, persuaded her GP to send her for a scan. There was a small cyst on her left ovary.
After another battle and two-month wait, she got this removed – and asked the surgeon to look for anything else that might be causing her so much pain. He found scar tissue, took a sample and sent it off for testing.
Meanwhile, Eimire covered but didn’t feel any better. Then came a midnight phone call from her dad. The hospital wanted to see her first thing the next morning and he was to go with her.
After scans and blood work, it was confirmed – Eimi had stage one cancer somewhere in her lower abdomen. She was booked in for exploratory surgery on Hogmanay.
On January 2 she woke up in terrible pain. A doctor she didn’t know was making her way round the ward with a group of students.
She picked up Eimi’s chart and asked her: “Have you had a hot flush yet?” When horrified Eimi didn’t reply, the doctor said: “Has your menopause started? Because you’ve had your ovaries removed, it might be quite aggressive.”
Eventually the story fell into place. During the operation, the surgeon had discovered advanced ovarian cancer. It had destroyed her reproductive system and was heading for her lungs. While she was still on the operating table, the surgeon phoned Eimi’s father to get his permission to remove her ovaries.
Eimi said: “It was the hardest decision Dad ever had to make. But he made the right call. I had low-grade serous carcinoma, the one known as ‘the silent killer’. It was at stage 3c, the very last moment before stage 4. If it had spread further, I would have died.”
After the operation, she was too sick to notice her teenage menopause and worry about a future with no babies in it. Eimi had to start an aggressive course of chemotherapy, which gave her a violent allergic reaction and caused her weight to balloon as well as making her hair fall out.
The treatment only has a 3.7% success rate. Eimi was one of the lucky ones and, by the time she was 20, she was cancer free.
After all she had been through, it was time to bin the balance sheets and study what she really loved – musical theatre. She added: “I nearly died. I was not going to be doing something I don’t want to do any more.”
Despite having hot flushes, she also signed up for Tinder and went on some awkward, sweaty dates.
Then there was survivor guilt. She said: “Almost everybody I met who was my age was diagnosed late because of their age and has passed away. I thought I would just be grateful – and I am – but I also feel this isn’t fair.”
Eimi pushed through. Despite being size 22, she went to ballet classes and slowly lost all the weight she had put on. But persistent stomach problems did not go away – they got worse.
Eventually she was diagnosed with pelvic adhesions, a common after-effect of abdominal surgery.
Now she’s made the radical decision to have a stoma bag fitted, which she hopes “will completely change my life”.
Eimi is only now accepting what it means to be 28 and post-menopausal. She and Ciaran might adopt a child. She added: “My friends are having babies. I’m happy for them – I’m just sad for myself.”
