A young woman who was left with a “hard” and swollen belly due to a deadly disease has urged others to go to the doctor “immediately” if they notice anything is wrong. Tora Murphy was left with a staggering 12 litres of fluid in her abdomen before discovering she had ovarian cancer.
The now 25-year-old, from Brisbane in Australia, was supposed to be on a year-long world travel trip with her partner when she started experiencing bloating.
It became so bad that she looked “six months pregnant” with the pair even joking that maybe she was.
However, after four weeks of this, alongside a number of other symptoms, Tora decided to get checked out by a doctor while in the UK.
Then, in June 2023, she learned the devastating truth about her condition.
Speaking in a TikTok video, she recalled: “We were gone for seven weeks and I had been bloated for probably like four out of the seven weeks and I was getting progressively worse.
“So by the time we got to the UK on our trip I decided I should probably go and get it checked out because I was unable to eat and I was really uncomfortable. It’s just really bizarre. So I was like, ‘You know what, I’m just gonna go suss it out.’”
It was a complete shock to Tora to find out she had ovarian cancer. But when she looked back she realised she had been displaying other signs of the disease.
In a separate video, she revealed all the red flag symptoms she wished she had acted on sooner.
“Attention all women, I wanted to share what symptoms I had for ovarian cancer,” she said.
“At the time I didn’t really notice what they were. But looking back, they were all major red flags of ovarian cancer and because the symptoms are so vague they’re oftentimes brushed off.”
Tora first spoke about the bloating. “The main one, which is all I really thought about at the time, was my extreme bloating. I looked about six months pregnant, it was all hard from under here, all the way down. It got progressively worse.
“But now looking back there were other things in conjunction with that, that were red flags. And I just wanted to raise awareness for these symptoms because it wasn’t just bloating.”
Tora explained she also experienced:
- Feeling full all the time
- Weight loss
- Acid reflux
- Pain during sex.
She said: “I was struggling to eat due to feeling full all the time and it wasn’t that I didn’t have an appetite, I was definitely hungry, but I would feel up really, really quickly and it would make me really uncomfortable.
“I didn’t realise but I was actually losing a lot of weight because I had so much weight in my belly in the bloating. I didn’t notice until after that was all gone and I had lost like 10 kilos.
“Another one is reflux. I had extremely extremely bad reflux. Every time I took a sip of any drink it literally would come back up.
“The last one probably is a bit TMI, but painful sex. Again, I kind of just brushed it off.”
Tora finished by urging others to seek help if they notice any symptoms.
She said: “So I just wanted to share those because obviously the symptoms of ovarian cancer are extremely vague. Basically all of those could be linked to something else, but combined looking back, I’m like, ‘Wow, I was a walking red flag for ovarian cancer.’
“So those are key symptoms to look out for and if you’re a woman, make sure that if you do present any of those symptoms that you go to the doctor immediately.”
Since her diagnosis Tora has been undergoing chemotherapy to treat the disease. In an update posted in June she said she would continue to “soldier on”.
According to Cancer Research UK, ovarian cancer is the sixth most common cancer among women in the UK, with around 7,500 new cases every year.
If you experience any symptoms of ovarian cancer you should speak to your GP.