For months before her diagnosis, Krystal had been experiencing sharp, stabbing pains in her abdomen. She assumed it was a food intolerance or perhaps something she had eaten that didn’t sit right.
At first, the pain came and went. But soon, it became unbearable.
She described the sensation as “stabbing pains that brought me to my knees.” Eventually, the pain became so intense that she had to be airlifted by ambulance to Alice Springs Hospital in Australia.
Even high doses of pain relief barely touched the agony. “Morphine did nothing,” she recalled. “Only fentanyl was able to dull it.”
When doctors finally ran scans, the results were devastating — the cancer had spread everywhere.
The Symptoms That Were Easy to Miss
Looking back, Krystal realized that her body had been warning her for months. The signs were there, but they seemed small, easy to overlook — especially for someone trying to balance work, motherhood, and daily life.
She listed several symptoms that, in hindsight, were early signs of bowel cancer:
- Persistent abdominal pain and cramping
- Unexplained fatigue, which she attributed to being a “busy mom”
- Irregular bowel movements that she thought were due to irritable bowel syndrome (IBS)
- Night sweats, which she blamed on the warm Australian weather
- Occasional bloating and discomfort after meals
None of these felt like a medical emergency at the time. But together, they painted a dangerous picture.
As Krystal later shared, “Never in a million years did I think that I would have something this cruel in my body. Cancer hurts — literally.”
