Woman Recalls Having 8 Organs Removed During 'the Mother of All Surgeries' amid Treatment for Rare Cancer

01/05/2025 10:32 PM

Faye Louise was diagnosed with a rare cancer that often requires multiple organs to be removed via surgery — but one year later, she's now cancer-free

A U.K. woman is recounting how she had cancer so severe that she began planning her own funeral — before she underwent "the mother of all surgeries" and came out cancer-free.

Opening up about her cancer diagnosis, Faye Louise of West Essex told BBC in an interview published on Saturday, Jan. 4. that she was diagnosed with a rare former of cancer in 2023 after experiencing stomach pains for months.

Doctors first found that she had an ovarian cyst, but it wasn't until Louise underwent surgery for it that she "heard the dreaded c-word" and received a diagnosis of pseudomyxoma peritonei, or PMP, she told the outlet.

According to the Cleveland Clinic, this rare cancer spreads by secreting mucin, a component of mucus, inside a person's abdomen, causing it to fill up with a jelly-like substance.

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Louise, a former model and flight dispatcher at London's Gatwick Airport, told BBC that cancer cells had spread around her body, and she would need to remove eight of her organs, including her spleen, gallbladder, appendix, ovaries, uterus, fallopian tubes, belly button, part of her liver and greater and lesser omentum (which connects the stomach to other organs).

Despite the difficulties that stemmed from the rare diagnosis, doctors pronounced Louise cancer-free following the November 2023 surgery.

"To have been told there is no evidence of disease, it was the greatest Christmas gift that I could have got," she told BBC.

Doctors still require Louise to go in for an annual scan to make sure her cancer has not returned, but more than one year after her surgery, she is staying positive.

"Waiting for the results will sadly make or break every Christmas for me. But you just have to keep pushing forward and never give up," she told the outlet. "Some days I have been down to the depths of despair, but more often than not now, I'm having more positive days."

On the first anniversary of her surgery — Nov. 25, 2024 — Louise wrote candidly in an Instagram post about feeling many different emotions about her cancer journey, including everything from "numb" to "joy."

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"The last year the grueling recovery and everything I've endured on this journey has been worth it all to hear I am cancer free one year on," she wrote. "I can't thanks the nurses and surgeons enough at Basingstoke who worked on me tirelessly in that operating room for 11 hours. They really have saved my life."

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The former model has even taken things a step further — she's helped to fundraise for the organization Cancer Research UK and also competed in this year's Race for Life in Brighton, England, to raise more funding to help others with cancer.

"Here's to a fabulous Christmas and moving into 2025, making more memories, seeing new places, my cruise, and just knowing cancer isn't coming along for the ride," Louise added in her post.