Ellie Waters-Barnes was just 14 when a rare cancer left her feeling like she had been dumped into an 80-year-old's body and forced into early menopause at just 15. A decade after being told her treatment would likely wreck her fertility and stop her puberty in its tracks, the Stoke-on-Trent survivor has graduated as a doctor, securing her first hospital job.
Diagnosis and Delay
Ellie, now 25, was diagnosed in 2015 with rhabdomyosarcoma, a rare soft tissue cancer, after months of ignoring a lump she found in an intimate spot. She first noticed what she described as a kidney bean-sized lump in her left buttock in January 2015. Embarrassed, she kept quiet.
I probably had this lump for about six, seven months before I said anything, she said. By the seventh month, it was basically taking up the whole butt cheek. It was pretty bad.
Along with the swelling, Ellie also had lumps in her groin lymph nodes, constipation, difficulty urinating, and a stabbing pain down her leg when she ran. She assumed it was just bad luck and would disappear.
After finally visiting a doctor in August, she received the terrifying diagnosis in September 2015. By then, it was stage four, meaning the cancer had already spread.
Treatment and Consequences
Doctors launched an aggressive treatment over 18 months, including nine months of intense chemotherapy and radiotherapy focused on her pelvis. Ellie went into remission in March 2017. However, beating cancer came at a brutal cost.
The radiotherapy damaged her reproductive organs. Puberty effectively stopped, her periods never returned, and she was diagnosed with early menopause and infertility. At the time, Ellie said she did not care.
I didn't care how I was left, as long as I survived the cancer, she said. I didn't really care at that point about the repercussions.
Doctors told her it would be confirmed if her periods did not return within six months. They did not. Instead, she experienced exhaustion, aches, and other symptoms, initially attributed to lingering chemo effects, before starting hormone replacement therapy (HRT) to manage menopause symptoms.
I'd not really properly gone through puberty before the treatment, Ellie said. With the treatment, it completely went, and then I went through menopause. Where I left off, that was it.
Medical Career
Rather than letting it break her, Ellie used the experience as motivation. In September 2021, she started a Medicine degree at Keele University. On Monday, July 13, she graduated with an MBChB with distinction.
It's a very good achievement, she said. All this hard work has now come to this point.
On August 5, Ellie starts her first job as a doctor at Royal Stoke University Hospital. She celebrated with a backpacking trip around Europe. Despite nerves, she says the job feels like an honour.
It's definitely a privilege to take care of people's health when they're in their most vulnerable state, she said.
Ellie once considered oncology but admitted it may hit too close to home. Instead, she is leaning towards hormones and endocrinology, a subject she has become fascinated by because of the health issues she still lives with.
I do have quite a few health problems as a result of my cancer treatment, she said. It's a stressful job for an able-bodied person. I'm just going to have to play it by ear.
Still, after everything she has been through, Ellie's focus is fixed firmly on the future.
I'm excited to be around all the teams, the patients, she said. It makes it interesting when you've got all these different people around you.
