Maryann Rowe, a 57-year-old self-employed cleaner from London, was told in September that her cancer has spread and she may have only 12 months to live. The grandmother had been on anti-depressants for anxiety for 10 years before she started experiencing infrequent vomiting and nausea from August 2024.
Maryann said she began “going to the doctors on a regular basis” from January 2025, but her symptoms of nausea, vomiting and “aches and pains” were initially believed to be anxiety. By September 2025, her daughter Chelsea Rowe, 35, a dog groomer, said her mother complained of “severe abdominal pain”, so they went to the A&E department at St Helier Hospital in Sutton.
A doctor gave Maryann a physical examination and “felt a mass” in her stomach. After a week of “all the tests and scans”, her 13cm tumour was discovered. She was transferred to the Royal Marsden Hospital in Chelsea, where she found out she had cancer and underwent a full hysterectomy in November 2025, including HIPEC treatment, a type of heated chemotherapy inserted directly into her abdomen during surgery.
Cancer spread despite treatment
After the surgery, Maryann and Chelsea discovered that the stage three ovarian carcinosarcoma had spread to Maryann’s bowels. Despite two more rounds of chemotherapy, the cancer continued to spread, and doctors told the family in September this year that she may only have 12 months to live.
Chelsea said she is raising money to make “lasting memories” with her mother and to ensure she is “as comfortable as possible” after her terminal diagnosis. Maryann said: “It wasn’t until I found out I got the 12-month diagnosis that I had a proper cry. Trying to get myself physically well again was a hard, long road… now I’ve got to try and get myself mentally fit. So it has taken a lot, but I’m just going to keep fighting and fighting. Hopefully, we can go beyond 12 months.”
Maryann first started taking anti-depressants in 2016 after a relationship breakdown and her father’s death. When she started experiencing nausea and vomiting at the end of summer in 2024, she thought it might just be a sickness bug. By Christmas Day, she said she “struggled to eat” breakfast with her granddaughter Chloe, 12, and threw up whatever she managed to consume, alongside experiencing constipation.
‘Countless’ visits to the doctor
When her condition did not improve by the start of 2025, Maryann went to her GP, who believed her symptoms to be linked to her history of anxiety. For months afterwards, her condition “definitely got worse”, and she would be “running to the toilet after every meal”. Chelsea said: “It started to become normal for us to see. So we just thought she must be stressed about something, because that’s what the doctor said.”
Maryann had “countless” visits to her doctor across nine months, but no physical examinations or blood tests picked up her 13cm ovarian tumour. By September 2025, a year after first noticing symptoms, Chelsea had to phone an ambulance for her mother because she “wouldn’t stop throwing up” for a full week. Chelsea said: “She was screaming in pain and it was almost like she was about to give birth.”
Maryann received her cancer diagnosis within a week of her hospital admission. While she said the specific details of the conversation were a “blur”, she was “pretty shocked”. “Sometimes when you’re being told bad things, your mind just goes blank,” she said. Maryann had a full hysterectomy within two weeks and HIPEC treatment during surgery in November 2025. After the operation, the family found out she had stage three ovarian carcinosarcoma, a rare and aggressive form of cancer.
Making memories
Symptoms of ovarian cancer can include bowel changes, abdominal bloating and pressure, fatigue, indigestion, back pain, loss of appetite, nausea and vomiting, according to The Royal Marsden. Maryann has since had two more rounds of chemotherapy that left her with more nausea and vomiting, as well as fatigue, hair loss and bone pain. She also had an allergic reaction to cancer treatment, with two moments where she went into anaphylactic shock. Chelsea said: “I did think at one point she was going to die. She was just on the floor in a recovery position, but she went so pink, like Patrick from SpongeBob SquarePants. It was horrific.”
On September 9 this year, a scan revealed Maryann’s cancer had continued to spread despite treatment, with doctors warning she might only live for up to a year. This news hit both Maryann and Chelsea hard. “I sobbed to the point mum stopped crying to console me,” Chelsea said. Maryann is currently undergoing a course of chemotherapy before she is due to have another scan on October 29 to see if her cancer has spread any further.
To “help make Mum’s time count”, Chelsea set up a GoFundMe to raise money so that the family can go on a holiday to Spain or rent a cottage in the UK for Christmas – and Maryann’s birthday on Christmas Eve – to “make memories” together. With more than £1,300 worth of donations so far, Chelsea wrote on the fundraiser page: “I know I can’t give my mum more time, but I want to help make the time she has as happy, meaningful and full of love as possible.”
The pair would like to raise awareness for the symptoms of ovarian cancer and to urge people to advocate for themselves to “get checked” if they have concerns about their health. “It needs to be made aware how severe this can be,” Maryann said. “Girls need to get checked out when they get these pains or feel different to how they normally feel.” The family’s fundraiser is on GoFundMe.
