Starting in sixth grade, Liberty "Libbie" Ashworth started feeling sick frequently, losing her appetite and experiencing back pain. “I would get really constipated,” Libbie, now 18, of Panora, Iowa, tells TODAY.com.
“There was obviously something going on in my stomach.” By her freshman year, Libbie noticed blood in her stool. She and her parents knew something was seriously wrong.
Even though they had visited numerous doctors to understand Libbie's symptoms, doctors dismissed her. “I was actually told that it’s normal for teenage girls to have bouts of blood in their stool,” she says. “My mom was not very happy, and we moved to a different (doctor).
” After experiencing intense, sharp abdominal pain and being rushed to the hospital, Libbie received a shocking diagnosis: the then 14-year-old had stage 4 colon cancer. “It was so frustrating,” Tim Ashworth, 52, Libbie’s dad, tells TODAY.com.
“They thought we were just bringing her to the doctor too much. We kept saying there’s something going on with her.” Libbie dances competitively, and when she first started having back pain, she wondered if it had to do with her rigorous practice and performance schedule.
But she had other worrisome symptoms that didn’t seem related to dance. “I didn’t feel good,” she says. “I actually went and got allergy tested because I didn’t have an appetite.
” Tests never revealed an underlying cause, and doctors assured Libbie that she was fine. Then, when sh.
