An NHS nurse diagnosed with an aggressive form of stomach cancer at just 28, has revealed how heartburn—which was exacerbated by taking a weight loss jab—was her only symptom.
Chloe, now 30, said she had suffered intermittent heartburn since the middle of 2022, about two years before she was diagnosed with the cancer in March last year.
In a series of clips on TikTok Chloe said she initially assumed her heartburn was due to a poor diet, noting episodes seemed to be triggered by greasy food and drinking alcohol.
However, she noticed her symptoms got far worse after she was prescribed a weight loss jab in November 2023.
‘When I was taking that I noticed that the reflux had got a bit worse and I was getting a bit of pain in my sternum that was going through to my back,’ she said.
‘I had the first dose and my heartburn was horrific that week.
‘It was almost this spasm sensation that I was getting.’
She added that the pain was so bad she eventually went to A&E for help, and this was when she first suspected something was more seriously wrong with her stomach than simple heartburn.
An NHS nurse diagnosed with an aggressive form of stomach cancer at just 28, has revealed how heartburn—which was exacerbated by taking a weight loss jab—was her only symptom. Stock image
However, she added that: ‘As soon as I stopped taking the injections that all went away.’
Heartburn is a common side effect of weight loss jabs affecting one in 10 patients taking Mounjaro as well a tenth of those the active ingredient in Ozempic and Wegovy, semaglutide.
It was only in January 2024 when Chole went for an endoscopy—where a flexible camera is inserted down the throat and into the stomach—ton investigate her persistent heartburn that medics found traces of something more serious.
Images showed what medics initially thought was the remains of an ulcer—an open sore in the stomach—that had since started to heal.
Samples taken at the time also confirmed she had a type of bacteria living in her stomach called Helicobacter pylori (H. pylori) a known cause of stomach ulcers and, as Chole would later learn, cancer of the organ.
At a follow-up check a few weeks later medics grew increasingly concerned that this ‘ulcer’ hadn’t fully disappeared despite Chole getting treatment, so samples were taken for testing.
Three weeks later, the results revealed the devastating truth, the young woman had stomach cancer, a disease that kills over a fifth of patients within a decade.
While ‘blindsided’ by this diagnosis, Chole detailed how even worse news was yet to come.
The tests showed she had a particularly aggressive and rare form of the disease called signet ring cell adenocarcinoma.
Medics also told Chloe that her cancer was most likely caused by the H. pylori infection.
H. pylori—which infests the lining of the stomach and causes damage to tissue that can lead to cancer—is surprisingly common. An estimated two in five Britons have the bug.
The vast majority—some eight or nine out of ten—won’t know it as the bacteria normally causes no symptoms or only relatively mild problems like indigestion, bloating or nausea that can be easily dismissed.
Studies suggest being infected with the bacteria increases the risk of developing stomach cancer six-fold although getting appropriate treatment like antibiotics dramatically reduces this.
Data from the British charity Cancer Research UK (CRUK) suggests 41 per cent of the UK’s 6,500 annual stomach cancer cases are caused by H. pylori, about 2,700 cases a year.
Thankfully for Chole, further tests and scans indicated the cancer had been caught at a very early stage.
However, due to its aggressive nature she had her entire stomach—as well as some connecting tissues—removed in a major surgery that followed months of chemotherapy.
She has since undergone further chemotherapy in a bid to eliminate any microscopic remains of the cancer missed in the operation, which finished last November.
While she will still need to undergo regular scans to ensure the cancer has not returned, Chloe said she was looking forward to the future, even as she grappled with no longer having a stomach.
‘Overall I’m doing really well, getting my strength back. I’m training for a half-marathon in October this year,’ she said.
‘Obviously I’ve lost a lot of weight because I don’t have a stomach so my eating is very different now, I have a lot of smaller portions.’
Speaking now in a series of clips which have been viewed over 150,000 times, Chloe said she wanted to raise awareness about the dangers of unaddressed heartburn.
‘If you have that (heartburn) it doesn’t always mean you have cancer but it’s always worth having it checked,’ she said.
She added she had no other classic symptoms of disease such as losing weight, fatigue, blood in stools, vomiting, or loss of appetite.
‘If anyone has heartburn and it’s not getting better…especially if you’re younger…you should push your GP to do more investigations and see why,’ she said.
‘That’s why stomach cancer is so hard to detect because heartburn is so common.’
Heartburn is an extremely common ailment, affecting about one in four adults in the UK.
Chloe’s warning comes as the NHS plans to offer heartburn sufferers a new test in high street pharmacies that can detect a condition that dramatically increases the risk of developing oesophageal cancer.
She’s also not the only patient to have an interesting interaction between cancer symptoms and weight loss jabs.
Last week MailOnline reported on a case of a 47-year-old man who revealed how medics missed the early warning signs he had colon cancer as they assumed his symptoms were from taking Mounjaro.
About 18 Britons and 83 Americans are diagnosed with stomach cancer each day.
The disease kills just over 4,200 patients in the UK each year, with the death toll rising to nearly 11,000 in the US.
Only about one in six patients with stomach cancer (17 per cent) are expected to still be alive 10 years after their diagnosis.
About one in 92 men and one in 170 women in the UK are estimated to develop stomach cancer in their lifetime.
The main symptoms of stomach cancer include heartburn or acid reflux, having problems swallowing, feeling or being sick, indigestion and burping and feeling full very quickly when eating.
These symptoms are common and usually caused by other conditions but patients who have had them for over three weeks should contact their GP for advice.
Other symptoms include loss of appetite or losing weight without trying, stomach pain, a lump feeling at the top of the stomach and feeling very tired.
