There's a phrase that gets thrown around casually online: hot girls have tummy issues. It's funny, it's relatable, and for Jess Thompson, it almost cost her everything. What she'd been brushing off as a stomach sensitivity turned out to be a five-centimetre tumour in her bowel. She was 24.

It started around the New Year. Jess had been to festivals, was getting back into the gym, and put her fatigue down to a big summer. Then came the cramps, not the ordinary kind, but debilitating waves that would hit after eating, followed by vomiting or diarrhoea. She saw several doctors. Given her age and otherwise good health, none flagged it as urgent.

"I thought maybe I was feeling a bit fatigued from just doing a lot," she recalls. "I assumed celiacs, or gluten intolerance, or some kind of allergy." The pattern repeated four months in a row. She began to wonder if it was endometriosis given the cyclical timing. Her GP was dismissive. "He was like, 'Oh, but you're fine now.' And I was like, yes, but this has happened four times and something feels off."

The night she called an ambulance, she thought she was being dramatic. She'd eaten a dense muffin and the cramps hit harder than ever. It was only after calling Healthline mid-Covid that someone suggested she ring emergency services. "I don't think that thought would have even crossed my mind," she says. "Had I not made that first call, I don't know what would have happened."

At hospital, a blood test showed she had lost nearly half her blood count. She'd been internally bleeding and hadn't known. Three blood transfusions. An iron infusion. Then scans, a colonoscopy, and the word cancer, delivered while her partner was getting a coffee.

Why this story matters

We're sharing Jess's story because it's one so many of us will recognise, at least in part. The brushing off of symptoms. The assumption that pain is just part of being a woman. The exhausting work of convincing someone in a position of authority that something is genuinely wrong.

The paramedic who treated Jess that night told her something that has stayed with her: the number of women she regularly saw arrive at hospital with gut symptoms, only to be sent home without a diagnosis. Not a one-off. A pattern. And we think that's worth saying plainly, because too many of us have been on the receiving end of it.

What to watch for

We want to be clear: we're not here to make anyone anxious about every stomach cramp. Most of the time, gut discomfort is exactly what it seems. But there's a difference between something that comes and goes and something that keeps showing up. Jess's cancer developed from a polyp, which is how most bowel cancers begin: quietly, over time, without dramatic warning signs.

Symptoms worth taking seriously, especially if they're recurring:

• Severe abdominal cramping, particularly after eating

• Unexplained changes in bowel habits lasting more than a few weeks

• Blood in your stool, or stools that are unusually dark

• Persistent bloating, nausea, or vomiting

• Unexplained fatigue or feeling faint

• A pattern of episodes that repeats, even if each one seems to resolve on its own

If any of these feel familiar, please talk to your doctor. If your doctor dismisses you, ask again. Or find someone who won't. It's important to be specific: tell them how many times it has happened, how severe it was, and ask for it to be documented. Make it harder to be brushed off.

Letting yourself feel it

One of the things that struck us most about Jess's story was how she navigated the emotional side of her diagnosis. Not with relentless positivity, but with something harder and more honest: letting herself actually feel what she was going through.

Her partner, a natural fixer, struggled. This wasn't a problem he could solve, and that was genuinely painful for him. Jess had to have real conversations about the fact that what she needed wasn't solutions. She needed space.

And honestly? We think a lot of us can relate to that dynamic, whether it's a cancer diagnosis, a fertility struggle, a loss, or just a season of life that's heavier than usual. The people who love us want to help, and helping often looks like fixing. But sometimes there's nothing to fix. Sometimes the most loving thing someone can do is just sit with us in it.

"There are times where you need to just digest the information," Jess says. "You're allowed to be sad that it's happening. Those moments don't last forever, but it's important that you let yourself feel that."

We think about this a lot. The pressure to stay positive, to find the silver lining, to keep moving. It comes from love, but it can quietly shut people down. Feeling it is part of moving through it. Bottling it up just means it comes out somewhere else, later, sideways.

Which brings us to the other side of that conversation: what to do when you're the one trying to show up.

Tips for how to actually show up for someone

If someone you love is going through something hard and you're not sure what to do, Jess said sometimes the most useful thing to do is just ask them. Don't assume you know what they need. Don't project what you would want. Just ask.

It sounds simple, but it changes everything. Because the truth is, different people need different things, and the same person might need different things on different days. Some of Jess's people were the ones she'd call to cry to. Others were the ones who'd show up and do laundry. Neither role is more important than the other. Knowing which one you are, and showing up in that way consistently, matters far more than a big gesture that doesn't follow through. "You're better off doing what you can do," she says, "rather than committing to things you can't do."

She also gave herself permission to protect her energy early on. In those first weeks, when she didn't have answers, she found it exhausting repeating herself, so she asked her partner and a close friend to handle communications on her behalf. Not because she didn't appreciate the love. Because she only had so much capacity, and she needed to be careful with it. If you're the one going through something hard, that's allowed. Delegating is not shutting people out.

Jess's story is about cancer, but it's really about something bigger: knowing your body, trusting what it's telling you, letting yourself feel the hard things, and showing up honestly for the people you love. Those aren't lessons that belong to a diagnosis. They belong to all of us, in whatever we're navigating right now. We came away from our conversation with her feeling more resolved to take our symptoms seriously, to give ourselves permission to not be okay, and to ask before we assume. We hope you do too.

If you're interested to hear the the full podcast with Jess Thompson, head to The Cyclist podcast on Spotify. And as always, this post is for information only. If you're concerned about symptoms, please speak with a healthcare professional.

Episode Name: "Hearing 'It's Bowel Cancer' at 26 with Jess Thompson on The Cyclist - available on Spotify