A young mother of two has passed away after mistaking "one in a million" cancer for period pain. Photo / Instagram
A young mother of two has passed away after mistaking "one in a million" cancer for period pain. Photo / Instagram
A 34-year-old mother of two has tragically passed away after going to the doctor with a backache she believed was a symptom of her menstrual cycle.
Daily Mail Australia has reported, Sydney-based Melinda Kolodynski passed away last week shortly after doctors told her that her backache was not a symptom of her menstrual cycle but rather cancer.
Noting that the diagnosis was one Kolodynsky “wasn’t willing to accept”, the mother of two boys - a seven and a one-year-old - first noticed the pain in 2020 when she felt a dull ache in her back.
Dismissing it as period pain, the Australian woman took Panadol to help subside the aches however two months later it became so bad she was unable to ignore it and was forced to call an ambulance.
Speaking to 7News last year, Kolodynsky recalled the July night saying, “By 11 pm, I was in the worst pain of my life. I was begging my husband to kill me as we waited for the ambulance, it was that bad.”
After being rushed to hospital and undergoing emergency testing, doctors found what they believed was the cause of her pain. Telling her they had found a cluster of three masses on her ovaries and suspected it was advanced ovarian cancer, Kolodynsky would soon learn her cancer journey had only just begun.
Upon seeing a specialist and receiving further testing, she was told even more bad news. She had an ultra-rare soft tissue blood cancer called angiosarcoma.
“It’s a one-in-a-million type of cancer. Being in my pelvis as a primary cancer meant mine was actually a one-in-10-million case,” she told 7News.
Melinda Kolodynski passed away last week after a short battle with a rare cancer. Photo / Instagram
The mother of two underwent intensive chemotherapy and the option of a 16-hour surgery in attempt to beat the cancer. However, just as she was scheduled to undergo the gruelling surgery, scans revealed the tumour had grown significantly and doctors were unable to operate.
Following the devastating news, she heartbreakingly confessed to 7News that her final months would see her help prepare her children - especially her eldest son - for life when she’s gone.
“I have had to tell him mummies can’t always be there forever and that Daddy and Grandma will take care of him and his mummy will always be in his heart.”
Last month, Kolodynsky took to Instagram with an upsetting final update, “As the saying goes all good things must come to an end, and I landed myself a stay in palliative care for what I like to call a quick tune up after a suspected malignant septic episode.
“My scan results weren’t good and it’s taken me a few days to gather myself and prepare for the next chapter of this hideous disease,” she wrote prior to her death.
“Cancer has metastasised to my liver and is quite progressed, my oncologist talks of prognoses that I’m quite frankly just not willing to accept, so once again we spend a couple of days with our heads in the pillow, tears streaming down our faces but it’s time to get up dust off and soldier on because there is a fight to be had and I’m not done here.”
