Rhian Butlin has stage 4 cancer today because doctors spent months treating her for a disease she didn’t have. The 32-year-old lost her womb, ovaries, and fertility to a misdiagnosis while the actual cancer spread unchecked through her body.
By the time physicians discovered their error, the rare tumor had metastasized beyond treatment. Butlin now faces an incurable diagnosis that might have been caught early if doctors had identified the right cancer from the start.
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A Single Mother Left Without Options
“I’ve had a full hysterectomy when I did not need to,” Butlin told the Daily Mail. “I’ve had my ovaries removed when I did not have ovarian cancer and I’ve had the lining of my bowel removed when I did not have bowel cancer.”
The dental nurse and single mother of two can no longer have children. She undergoes intensive chemotherapy while trying to care for her family. Some nights she barely sleeps, consumed by fear about what comes next.
Her sister Lindsey Rice put it bluntly: “It feels like we have been massively let down.”
How Doctors Got It Wrong
Butlin first sought help in September 2024 for severe abdominal pain. Doctors ordered a scan that came back clear and dismissed her symptoms as polycystic ovary syndrome.
The pain worsened over the next two months. Her abdomen swelled until she looked nine months pregnant. When she returned to the hospital in November, a second scan showed a 25-centimeter tumor on her ovary.
On her 32nd birthday, doctors told her she had ovarian cancer. They scheduled immediate surgery.
The Operation That Nearly Killed Her
Surgeons performed a complete hysterectomy in December 2024. They also removed her appendix and sections of her bowel lining. The team took biopsies from all three organs.
Butlin’s body crashed after surgery. She developed sepsis. Fluid accumulated in dangerous amounts. Doctors placed her in a medically induced coma as her condition deteriorated.
“We were told our little sister possibly wouldn’t make it through the night,” Rice wrote in a GoFundMe appeal. “Our world fell apart.”
Butlin survived. She went home to recover and waited for her biopsy results.
24 Hours of Relief
Two months after surgery, doctors called Butlin back to the hospital. The biopsies showed no cancer in any of the organs they had removed.
Medical staff apologized. They suggested she had endometriosis, a condition that mimics cancer on imaging scans. Not ovarian cancer. Not bowel cancer. The tumor had been benign.
“She didn’t have cancer after all,” Rice recalled. “Can you believe how happy we all were. We cried, jumped for joy. The nightmare was over.”
The celebration lasted one day.
The Cancer They Missed
Butlin’s symptoms returned immediately. When she contacted her doctors, they reviewed her medical records and discovered what they had overlooked.
“They said, ‘We are so sorry, we have gone through your notes and you did actually have cancer. But it was in your appendix, and it is one of the rarest forms of cancer,'” Rice told reporters.
Surgeons had removed Butlin’s appendix during the December operation. But the cancer had already escaped. Doctors found it in her pelvis and lymph nodes. Within two months of the surgery, scans confirmed stage 4 disease.
Medical oncologists told the family the cancer was now incurable.
Appendix Tumors Rarely Show Symptoms Early
Appendix cancer affects roughly 1 to 2 people per million each year. The tumor grows in a thin-walled organ where cancer cells break through easily and spread into the abdominal cavity.
Most patients show no symptoms until the disease has advanced. When symptoms appear, they often resemble appendicitis, bloating, or other common digestive problems. Scans frequently miss the thin layers of cancer cells.
The medical community didn’t even classify appendix cancer as separate from colorectal cancer until research published after 2010 established its distinct characteristics.
Six Months Lost
Butlin reported her first symptoms in September 2024. She began chemotherapy for appendix cancer in April 2025.
Between those two dates, doctors performed major surgery to remove organs she didn’t need to lose. The actual cancer continued growing and spreading while physicians focused on the wrong diagnosis.
“If they figured it out earlier on, then we would not be in the position we are in now,” Rice said.
Current Treatment for Stage 4 Disease
Butlin started her first three-month chemotherapy course on April 8, 2025. Her family raised over £3,500 through crowdfunding to cover costs and lost income.
Rice described her sister as someone whose entire life centers on her children, whom she raised alone from birth. “She’s everything to them,” Rice wrote. “She brought them up from day one alone. And is an incredible mummy.”
Butlin now lacks the strength to maintain her normal routine with her kids while undergoing treatment for metastatic cancer.
Questions About the Diagnostic Failures
The case raises concerns about how rare cancers slip through standard diagnostic protocols. Butlin underwent multiple scans, major surgery, and biopsies before anyone identified appendix cancer.
Her appendix was removed and sent for pathology during the December surgery. Yet it took months for doctors to discover cancer in that specific organ, even though they had the tissue samples.
The delay between removing the appendix and identifying the malignancy gave the cancer time to establish itself as stage 4 metastatic disease. Early detection of appendix tumors typically offers better treatment options and improved survival rates.
No investigation into the medical care has been publicly announced. Butlin continues treatment while her family seeks answers about why the correct diagnosis took so long to reach.
The unnecessary hysterectomy cost her fertility. The diagnostic delay may have cost her life.
