- A Florida woman, 20, had a protruding, round stomach since the fifth grade.
- She said she was dismissed by doctors and told to diet and exercise to lose weight.
Since Allison Fisher was a child, she felt doctors dismissed her concerns at every appointment. She was told to lose weight, whether she had a cold or an ear infection.
So she avoided going to the doctor when possible, even when she had a year-long period aged 17.
But after seeing her mom overcome cancer, she realized that she shouldn't ignore her own health issues anymore. She wanted to be able to look after her mom, not have her mom look after her.
In November 2022, aged 20, she went to the doctor for the first time in years and they discovered she had a 104-pound, 20 x 20 inch tumor the size of an extra-large watermelon on her ovary, which they believed could have been growing since she started ovulating.
Fisher's experiences echoes those of other people with bigger bodies who say they are treated differently by medical professionals because of their weight. One woman told Insider she believes fatphobia contributed to her stage 4 cancer being missed, while another said symptoms of her rare tumor were dismissed and she was referred to a weight-loss and therapy program.
"Medical fat phobia is so real, because I've experienced it," Fisher said. "It was always: 'you need to lose weight' and nothing I did was ever good enough."
Her organs felt like they were being crushed
Fisher, who lives in Florida, had always been heavyset with a protruding, round stomach even in the fifth grade, she told Ascension, the healthcare system that removed her tumor, in a blog. She knew something was off and strangers often asked her if she was pregnant.
She told Insider a boy in her seventh grade art class was the first person to ask this.
"It's happened on multiple occasions since then," she said.
She said she carried her stomach like pregnant person, with a curved back, as this was what was most comfortable for her.
Fisher told News4JAX her stomach was "rock hard" and she couldn't lay on it because it felt like her organs were being crushed.
"I thought this was how I would be for the rest of my life," she said.
She told Insider she didn't go to the doctor when she had a year-long period because she was "really scared" after her problems were dismissed in the past, and she didn't want her health concerns to overshadow her mom's.
"Nobody's going to listen to me when I go to the doctor, they're just gonna tell me all of this is happening because of my weight," she said.
Eventually, her year-long period stopped, but in the fall of 2022 it "came back with a vengeance," she told Insider.
At this point she was also experiencing abdominal pain, bleeding, and, unknown to her, the mass was threatening her life because she was having trouble breathing.
"I was in extreme pain that could not be fixed with medications," she said.
The doctor she saw at Ascension St. Vincent's Mandarin immediately knew something was wrong and ordered for CT scans. They revealed a 104-pound tumor on her right ovary and a 12-pound mass on her left ovary, which had also been twisted around itself three times.
She sobbed tears of happiness when she was diagnosed
Fisher said the diagnosis was "very validating," and said she cried tears of happiness when she was given it.
Doctor Martin Martino who led the tumor removal told News4JAX that his team drained 46 liters of fluid during the procedure and it was likely the tumor had been growing since Fisher first started ovulating.
Fisher said she started crying when she woke up from the surgery and told the doctor he'd saved her life.
"It was such a relief to be over," she said.
Fisher told Insider that all through middle school and high school she'd been bullied because a lot of people just saw her for her weight, so she had been living life as a recluse — the mass had ruined her life.
But now she's hopeful for the future.
"I feel so independent now, I can wear clothes, I can see my feet, I can just exist like a person," she told Insider.
Fisher can now stand for hours, when before she would struggle to stand for longer than five minutes.
Moving forward, she's hoping to get weight loss surgery in the next couple of months and then go to college.
Fisher told Insider: "I want other people to know that if they're scared of going to the doctors, you know your body best, nobody can tell you otherwise and you just need to push for answers."