Ellie Waters-Barnes was just 14 when she was diagnosed
Ellie Waters-Barnes was just 14 when a rare cancer left her feeling like she’d been dumped into “an 80-year-old’s body” – and forced into early menopause at just 15. But a decade after being told her treatment would likely wreck her fertility and stop her puberty in its tracks, the Stoke-on-Trent survivor has pulled off a jaw-dropping comeback: she’s graduated as a doctor, bagging her first hospital job.
Ellie, now 25, was diagnosed in 2015 with rhabdomyosarcoma – a rare soft tissue cancer – after months of brushing off a lump she found in an intimate spot. She first noticed what she described as a “kidney bean-sized” lump in her left bum cheek back in January 2015. Mortified, she stayed quiet.
And in the time she kept it to herself, it exploded. “I probably had this lump for about six, seven months before I said anything,” she said. “By the seventh month, it was basically taking up the whole butt cheek. It was pretty bad.”
As well as the swelling, Ellie also had lumps in her groin lymph nodes, constipation, trouble peeing and a stabbing pain down her leg when she ran – but she assumed it was all just rotten luck and would somehow disappear.
It didn’t. After finally going to the doctor in August, she got the terrifying diagnosis in September 2015 – and by then it was stage four, meaning it had already spread.
Doctors launched an all-out assault over 18 months, with nine months of intense chemo and radiotherapy aimed at her pelvis – the very area that would change her life forever. Ellie went into remission in March 2017. But beating cancer came at a brutal cost.
Because the radiotherapy was focused on her pelvic area, it damaged her reproductive organs. Puberty effectively stopped. Her periods never returned. And the verdict was devastating: early menopause, infertility, and no further development. At the time, Ellie said she didn’t care.
“I didn’t care how I was left, as long as I survived the cancer,” she said. “I didn’t really care at that point about the repercussions.”
Doctors told her it would be confirmed if her periods didn’t come back within six months. They didn’t.
Instead, she found herself dealing with exhaustion, aches and other symptoms – at first assuming it was just lingering chemo fallout – before starting hormone replacement therapy (HRT) to manage menopause symptoms.
“I’d not really properly gone through puberty before the treatment,” Ellie said. “With the treatment, it completely went, and then I went through menopause… Where I left off, that was it.”
But rather than letting it break her, Ellie used it as fuel. In September 2021 she started a Medicine degree at Keele University – and on Monday, July 13, she graduated with an MBChB with distinction.
“It’s a very good achievement,” she said. “All this hard work has now come to this point.”
Now comes the real test. On August 5, Ellie starts her first job as a doctor at Royal Stoke University Hospital – after celebrating with a backpacking trip around Europe. And despite the nerves, she says the job feels like an honour.
“It’s definitely a privilege to take care of people’s health when they’re in their most vulnerable state,” she said.
Ellie once thought she’d go into oncology, but admitted it may hit too close to home. Instead, she’s leaning towards hormones and endocrinology – a subject she says she’s become fascinated by because of the health issues she still lives with.
“I do have quite a few health problems as a result of my cancer treatment,” she said. “It’s a stressful job for an able-bodied person… I’m just going to have to play it by ear.”
Still, after everything she’s been through, Ellie’s focus is fixed firmly on the future.
“I’m excited to be around all the teams, the patients,” she said. “It makes it interesting when you’ve got all these different people around you.”