A mom has urged people to trust their own instinct after she fought for a shocking diagnosis for over a year.

Heidi Richard, 47, was dismissed as simply having anxiety when she repeatedly went to doctors with symptoms.

She was also wrongly told she had acid reflux, glandular fever or stress.

But Heidi in fact had stage four cancer that had riddled her body and faced a long battle ahead.

Heidi wrote in a piece for Today: “In the spring of 2019, I started experiencing severe stomach pains at night, vomiting and night sweats.

“When I went to the doctor, they did some blood work and said, ‘You’re young, your stomach issues are probably due to stress or anxiety’. They gave me an antacid and sent me on my way.”

Heidi, of Worcester, Massachusetts, then struggled to eat without feeling sick and lost 28 pounds unexpectedly.

But again, Heidi claims doctors said she was likely just stressed from work and even gave her anti-anxiety medicine.

She said: “I believed them, even though I knew something wasn’t right. I was always asking to be seen or asking somebody to listen to me. It was frustrating.”

Almost a year after her first symptoms started, Heidi felt fatigued during the day, back pain and swelling in the side of her neck.

“I went to the doctor again and they started to blow it off again,” she said.

“They said I pulled a muscle and gave me a muscle relaxer. That’s when I said, no, I want some kind of imaging test.”

Doctors gave Heidi, a school teacher, a CT scan which showed “something suspicious”.

A biopsy led to a diagnosis of non-Hodgkin lymphoma, a type of blood cancer that weakens the immune system.

Heidi had stage 4 diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL), which is the most common type of non-Hodgkin lymphoma and fast-growing.

Around 5,500 people are diagnosed with DLBCL each year in the UK, and 18,000 in the US.

Heidi said: “It was everywhere: my abdomen, spleen, bone marrow, sternum, lungs, groin and neck.

“A mass in my abdomen was pushing my intestines to the side — that’s why I was having those stomach pains.”

Heidi had chemotherapy for several months and a stem cell transplant in January 2021, which helps increase the chances of long-term remission.

The mum was told she was in remission in the fall of 2020 and, if this is still the case in a few months time, her chances of relapse will be reduced.

But she still needs immunotherapy, which trains the body’s immune system to fight cancer cells, as an infusion every three weeks.

Incredibly, she still takes part in her favourite hobby, running, and has been training for the Boston Marathon.

“Running a marathon was an analogy that one of my nurses and I used during my treatment to help me gauge where I was. She would say, ‘You’re at the 10-mile mark right now’ or ‘You’re in the final five miles’.

“So to run a marathon after using that analogy throughout my treatment feels like coming full circle.”

Heidi urged others to get used to their body so they are aware when something is off, and push doctors for tests when they are worried.

She said: “Don’t be afraid of sounding like a hypochondriac — that’s what I was afraid of and luckily I spoke up when I did, because finally I had enough.

“Sometimes, I think about: What if I hadn’t demanded that imaging test? It might have gone on even further, and maybe they wouldn’t have been able to do anything.”

This story originally appeared on The Sun and was reproduced here with permission.