Mom, 36, felt ‘crazy’ before cancer diagnosis after common symptoms were dismissed for months

A mom has shared how she felt like she was ‘made out to be crazy’ after her cancer symptoms were dismissed by doctors before her diagnosis.

Heather Barry had just given birth to her third child when she began to notice things that made her worry.

Months into welcoming her little baby, she explained that symptoms presented themselves which gave her pause, but nobody would listen.

Because she had not long given birth, her concerns were swept to the side and blamed on her post-partum body, but she knew something was going on.

However, she was determined to get down to the bottom of what was happening to her, and this led to a terrible discovery after months of doctor’s visits: Heather was battling cancer.

She told Today: “In an odd way, it was a relief because I knew I wasn’t crazy, and I felt like I was being made out to be crazy.”

Heather Barry was facing common symptoms that doctors believed were part of her post-partum condition (Getty Stock Image)

The mom added: “I was shocked, absolutely 110%. I will never forget that moment.”

According to Heather, she was advised to eat a high-fiber diet, to walk more and to take stool softeners and laxatives for her persistent constipation and pain troubles.

But that didn’t help.

Eventually, she began to lose weight, totalling to 30 pounds after going to the restroom became so painful that she started eating less to prevent bowel movements.

But after she kept pushing, a colonoscopy finally revealed her stage 3 rectal cancer.

However, this was a shock to Dr. Ted Hong, director of gastrointestinal radiation oncology at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, who treated her.

This is because she had absolutely no risk factors for colorectal cancer.

“She’s very, very healthy and very active. Quite thin. She did not have any risk factors that we would have thought of for colorectal cancer,” Hong told the outlet.

“There is still no obvious answer as to why we’re seeing this dramatic increase in young onset colorectal cancer.”

For Heather, her rectal bleeding, pain and constipation woes had been solved, but it was a long road ahead.

It began with ‘bum pressure,’ hemorrhoids and rectal bleeding during her pregnancy, which then stopped after she gave birth in May 2023.

Heather was diagnosed with stage 3 rectal cancer (Getty Stock Image)

While many women have blood in their stool postpartum, this can mask symptoms of a tumor, Hong said.

“The pregnancy may have been a little bit of a distractor in that seeing blood in the stool is so common after pregnancy that it wasn’t sort of realized that there was something atypical about it,” he added.

Heather noted that she was bleeding around 90 percent of the time when she would go to the bathroom, with ‘very little’ stool or ‘none’ coming out.

She said: “It felt like there was something in there, blocking.”

At the time, when she was asking for tests to be conducted, a colorectal surgeon told her that she had hemorrhoids, but told her as per Heather: “You’re fine. Hemorrhoids don’t lead to colorectal cancer, so you don’t need to worry about that.”

“If you Google symptoms of colorectal cancer, I had every single thing, but now it’s three doctors who have told me I’m OK,” she said. “I was like, ‘Alright, I guess I’m just crazy.’”

As it turned out, Heather could not have her colonoscopy because there was a 2-inch tumor almost completely obstructing her rectum.

"None of this is normal," she says. "Nobody should go through this."

She was then sent for treatment at Massachusetts General Hospital and fitted with a colostomy bag so that she could eat, and pass movements, before her chemotherapy and radiation to her pelvis.

Then, in October 2024, she underwent surgery to remove her rectum and part of her colon.

Since then, however, the healthy parts of her colon have been reconnected, allowing normal bowel movements.

Now she feels ‘stronger than I have ever been in my life’.

If you’ve been affected by any of these issues and want to speak to someone in confidence, contact the American Cancer Society on 1-800-227-2345 or via their live chat feature, available 24/7 every day of the year.