Boxer dies at 25 after battling for months with doctors over diagnosis
British boxer Georgia O'Connor fought to the very end, ultimately losing her battle with a 'rare and aggressive' form of cancer that she said doctors ignored for months.
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She was 25 years old.
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O'Connor, a medal-winning boxer from Durham, England, shared her diagnosis earlier this year while tearing into the English medical system (NHS) and the doctors who overlooked her concerns.
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In an Instagram post, she shared that she had been diagnosed with cancer after weeks of debilitating pain, and claimed her concerns went ignored by doctors for four months.
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'For 17 weeks since the start of October, I've been in constant pain, going back and forth between Durham and Newcastle RVI A&E knowing deep down something was seriously wrong,' O'Connor wrote on Jan. 31. 'I said from the start I felt it was cancer. I KNEW the risks. I have colitis and PSC, two diseases that dramatically increase the chances of getting it. I KNOW how high my risk is and they do too. They always did.
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A post shared by Georgia Cardinali (@georgiaoconnor_1)
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'But not one doctor f***ing listened to me. Not one doctor took me seriously. Not one doctor did the scans or blood tests I begged for whilst crying on the floor in agony. Instead, they dismissed me. They gaslit me, told me it was nothing, made me feel like I was overreacting. They refused to scan me. They refused to investigate. They REFUSED to listen. One even told me that it's 'all in my head.' And now? Now the cancer has spread.'
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'And if that wasn't enough, throughout this whole time there's been BLOOD CLOTS all over my lungs. That ALONE could have killed me instantly.
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'They could have done something before it got to this stage. But they didn't. Because this is the state of the NHS — a broken system that fails young people like me over and over again. A system that makes people suffer, that sends them home in agony, that lets cancer spread whilst the thick, stupid, mindless 'doctors' shrug their shoulders.'
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