‘I don’t have a stomach while I’m alive’: Camila has cancer and created a group to help others

María Camila Gómez’s profile appears on the cell phone screen and draws attention. “Hello! Be @mariacamilagomez31 And yes, I don’t have a stomach,” he reads in his autobiography. “No stomach since 2019”, He said.

How is that possible? Can you live without a stomach? Maria Camilla asked the same two questions when she was diagnosed at a clinic in Medellin.

It all started with a slight stomach ache And he triggered a situation that she could not have imagined at the age of 16: They discovered two tumors in the stomach, polyps and the beginning of a malignant tumor. The young woman is from Barranquilla, Colombia, and because of her health had to settle in Medellin.

Image source instagram / sin.stomago: Despite the difficulties, Camila has always been confident in her ability to move forward

“A doctor I had never seen showed up and told me he was going straight to surgery, but at the time I didn’t understand what that meant. I thought it would be like pulling out a tooth, that is, they were pulling something out of me and that’s it. But it changed my life“, Tell T.

She was sure that everything would be fine, but admitted that the day they explained her health “was the most difficult”. “I cried a lot, it was pretty impressive to me, but I did it: I don’t have a stomach and I’m alive. I’m proof that you can go on‘ said the young lady.

“In the first year after the operation, I ate normally but in small proportions. In the second, many things began to deteriorate badly for me and this affected me: I cannot eat foods containing sugar, dairy or gluten.”

For this reason, the young Colombian eats “food everywhere”. “Now there are more restaurant options, but I have to be very careful: there are sauces for example that contain sugar, which the locals don’t know and my body immediately recognizes,” he said.

Maria Camilla was shocked by the fact that no specialist spoke to her about the “nutritional part” in detail. “They tell you that you will eat a lot, but they do not tell you about the process you will go through. A ‘healthy diet’ is a very broad concept for this type of condition.”

Due to lack of information, and due to “difficult, stressful and frustrating days”, he decided to create An online community to share her experience, raise awareness of stomach cancer, and help people like her.

“My family and friends have always accompanied me, they are my biggest support network, but It is convenient to talk to another person with the same diagnosis. Plus, I started to feel a lot of changes that I didn’t have when I had the surgery recently, and I felt a little lonely during the process.”

He opened the group in March and already has followers in Chile, Spain and Sweden who share his sentiments. “I didn’t think I’d find anything like this because most of us are young, and I had the surgery on them about four years ago, and it’s all very recent,” he said.

This was confirmed by Maria Camilla The group “helps her gain strength” and focus on the “good things”. “For people to join is a paradoxical sense because on the one hand I think: ‘How bad is that’ and at the same time, “How cool it is to create this containment set so that you are not alone!”“.