I had foot-long cancerous kidney tumor that I called ‘Subway’

A former teacher, whose stomach became so big that students started rumors she was pregnant, was stunned to learn she had a footlong tumor growing on her kidney.

Danielle Wright, 25, spoke out about her harrowing health ordeal in an interview with South West News Service on Thursday, saying she ended up giving the gigantic cancerous growth an unlikely nickname.

“We nicknamed my tumor ‘Subway’ because it’s a foot long,” declared the Manchester, England, resident. “We just kept on calling it ‘Subway’ because we didn’t really want to say, ‘Oh the cancer, oh the tumor,’ because it’s a bit depressing to keep talking about. In a way, when we joke about it, it makes it easier to handle.”

Wright told the publication that she first noticed a change in her bowel movements back in September 2020. She also started to experience lower back pain and extreme fatigue.

The same month, the geography teacher’s students started asking whether she was pregnant due to significant bloating of her stomach.

However, the educator “laughed off” the comments, given that she was eating a lot of fatty food at the time due to the stress of the job.

“I’d often eat a meal and then need to go to the toilet straight away, and if I didn’t, I’d be in agony, to the point where I’d have to go home from work,” she stated, before adding: “I was extremely fatigued.”

The teacher explained that she also went to weekly swimming classes, where people also started assuming she was pregnant due to her swollen stomach.

“Quite a lot of people told me I looked six-months pregnant,” the educator recalled.

Wright first visited a doctor in November 2020, who didn’t believe the bloating amounted to anything serious.

She booked follow-up appointments with multiple other medics, who put her symptoms down to irritable bowel syndrome, Crohn’s disease, food intolerances, the contraceptive pill and even stress.

All the while, Wright’s stomach kept getting larger.

“When my stomach was at its biggest, in one picture I probably look like I’m about to give birth,” she recalled.

In April this year, a doctor forcefully felt Wright’s tummy and found abnormalities.

” ‘I don’t want to alarm you, but this isn’t correct or not what a stomach should feel like,’ ” the doctor stated, before adding: ” ‘If you were 60, I’d think it’s cancer, but because you’re young, it’s unlikely.’ “

Despite the doctor’s prediction, a CT scan and a biopsy ultimately led to Wright’s kidney cancer diagnosis this past May.

On June 9, Wright underwent surgery to remove the massive tumor, which measured 12 by 11 inches and weighed much more than a typical baby: 13 pounds. The operation has left her with a two-foot scar stretching from just under her breast all the way to her pubic bone.

“The tumor originated on my left kidney and pushed all my organs to the right, so he had to put a lot of my organs back into the right place and some are still gradually going back into the right place,” the educator explained.

Wright was told she definitely had cancer for over a year before it was discovered due to the size of the tumor, but she suspects she had it for over two, given that she began noticeably bloating back in September 2020.

Despite the tumor’s incredible size, it has not spread throughout the young woman’s body.

“I just keep saying that there’s people out there that have chemotherapy for years and years, and I’m not going to have to have that,” she declared. “So it’s just counting the positives really.”

Still, Wright is angry at doctors for failing to find the tumor for more than 18 months.

Wright said: “In a way, it’s sort of ageism, they just looked and said, ‘She’s young, skinny and healthy, she’s not got cancer,’ and I think cancer doesn’t have an age — you can have babies with cancer.”

“I just feel like because I was young, I wasn’t taken seriously.”