Stacy Hernandez always had irregular periods. But when the bleeding wouldn’t stop, she got scared.
She said she visited her general practitioner and urgent care at least six times. Doctors changed her birth-control medications, blamed her excess weight and suggested the bleeding would eventually subside.
It didn’t. After more than a year, a doctor ordered an ultrasound followed by a test that finally identified the problem: uterine cancer.
“It was surreal,” said Hernandez, 31, who is undergoing treatment near her home in Utah. “It’s not OK for them to dismiss it like that.”
Uterine is the only cancer for which survival has fallen in the past four decades, the American Cancer Society said. The disease will kill some 13,250 women in the U.S. this year, the group estimates, surpassing ovarian cancer to become the deadliest gynecologic cancer.