A mum who was told she likely wouldn’t live to 40 due to aggressive bowel cancer has beaten the odds.

When Sophie Umhofer first started experiencing random bouts of vomiting, she thought it was just a stomach bug or a bad reaction to something she’d eaten.

But the symptoms persisted for a year and soon the mum-of-two, from Warwickshire, could barely finish a meal or keep anything down.

A colonoscopy showed a lesion blocking her bowel, which urged doctors to rush her for more tests.

Not long after, a nightmare diagnosis was confirmed: Sophie, now aged 41, had terminal bowel cancer that had spread extensively throughout her body.

To make matters worse, the biopsy showed a mutation called BRAF, which has a very low survival rate and life expectancy of around a year without treatment.

“The waiting [to hear the news] was awful,” Sophie, who was a stay-at-home mum at the time, told Jam Press.

“The cancer had spread to my liver and throughout my torso lymph nodes.

“My tumour was so large by that point that it was dangerously close to cutting my bowels off completely.

“The oncologist believed I would need intense chemotherapy for the rest of my life but even with that, and if the chemotherapy worked, because of my age, I would probably only have two to three years left.

“I wouldn't even live to see 40!

“I went into panic mode and had to start planning for a future I now didn't have.

“The worst part was that my kids were only three and six at the time, and the worry of leaving them was just overwhelming amongst everything else.

“My youngest might not even remember me. It was gut-wrenching.”

The mum, who shares children, Maisie and Freddie with her husband, Mike, 46, had emergency surgery to remove the tumour, before beginning palliative chemotherapy in August 2018.

But her cancer continued to progress, and she started to experience horrific side effects.

She said: “The chemotherapy absolutely destroyed me, physically and mentally.

“I was a shell of the person I used to be.

“Cancer tore my world apart at a time when I was just starting to live.

“I had to change my mindset when I was diagnosed and only live in two-week cycles, as everything would depend on how I reacted to the next chemotherapy round.

“I couldn't see a future any more and had to deal with knowing I was dying and going to leave my children without a mum.”

The mum has tried to remain transparent about her health with her kids but shared minimal detail as to not overwhelm them.

She said: "I told them I had something very bad growing in my body and they had to do lots of nasty things to try and kill it.

"My six-year-old is still a bit traumatised from seeing me so ill and poorly, as best as I tried to hide it.

"My husband refused to discuss [funeral plans] with me [because he didn’t want to consider my death].

"I didn't make any arrangements, but I wrote things down what I wanted him to do or not do in a book regarding the children, as well as many other things in terms of parenting – or ‘death admin’, as I like to call it.

"I wrote letters and birthday cards to my kids and made them a box each with some little gifts for when I was no longer around.

"The greatest thing about this now though is that I have already passed two of the birthday cards I had written for them.”

Sophie says that her loved ones offered to help in many different ways, such as setting up a GoFundMe to raise money for the family, and her sister-in-law has helped look after the kids.

Exhausted but still fighting for a future she may not have, Sophie kept going.

And somehow, a miracle occurred.

She was offered the chance to take part in a privately-funded drug trial for a new immunotherapy, which had previously worked on melanoma patients.

The treatment, which began in February 2019 saved her life – just two years later, in March 2021, her scans were clear.

Sophie said: “My surgeon telling me that it was all gone and successful, with the biopsy post-op showing no cancerous cells, and that I was cancer-free was the biggest moment for me.

“But it was also a bit anti-climatic and I think I was a bit numb from everything I had experienced.

"My brain was trying to protect itself and I still don't think I've really allowed myself to believe it [that I will survive], as we are always told that at stage four, you will die."

Sophie recalls calling her husband and crying with relief, and rushing home to hug the kids when they got back from school.

A few months later, the family celebrated with a "cancer gone" party, which her daughter organised and decorated the house with "mum beat cancer" banners.

Sophie got the official all-clear in July 2021 and was taken off the treatment, and has been in remission ever since.

She said: “I went from feeling like I was actually dying on chemotherapy to rapidly turning it around on immunotherapy.

“I started surviving. I was living past dates I was told I wouldn't.

'I am, of course, overwhelmingly grateful to still be here, but surviving what is basically a trauma has also been really hard, and not many people talk about that side of it.

"You get PTSD from surviving a near-death experience and I was told in no uncertain terms that I wouldn't survive this – it was just a matter of when.

"It's still hard for me to live differently than short periods of time, but this year has been the first where I have left myself plan ahead.”

Sophie has returned to work and is now a race team coordinator for different motorsport series'.

When she’s not doing what she loves at the office, she’s with her family.

The mum said: “Now I work in a job I absolutely love, which I was spurred to take on due to all of this.

“I never thought I would have a career after kids and I was happy with that, but this has helped me see that life has only just started for me in some ways.

“I pushed myself beyond what I knew I was capable of and I am now here for my children.

“My daughter just started senior school and that was a big milestone for me.

“I try to get the message out about never being too young for bowel cancer.

“I also try to help anyone who is going through it and I plan on building a community of people living beyond cancer, as this is an area that needs more attention.

“Miracles do happen. I am living proof of that.”

ENDS

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