Dancer's devastating discovery - 'MY SORE SHOULDER WAS CANCER'

Janine was just 20 years old when doctors struggled to diagnose why she was in so much pain

- Kim Savage

Suffering pain so excruciating she would sometimes cry herself to sleep at night, Janine Searle spent six months traipsing to countless appointments with medical professionals trying to find out why her shoulder hurt so much.

It wasn’t until a bone sample was finally taken and sent off for testing – by doctors in three different countries – that she received the diagnosis she’d spent so long dreading.

“I clearly remember that day,” Janine, 24, solemnly tells Woman’s Day. “I had my dad and my aunty with me, as well as a whole bunch of other doctors in that room.

“When they told me, it went all silent. I paused for a bit and then started crying. All I could think was, ‘I’m so young. How can it be cancer?’”

Janine, then aged 20 and a keen ballet dancer all through her teenage years, had moved from Blenheim to Christchurch to study tourism. She dreamed of travelling, but it was on her first day in her new career in the travel industry when she felt the pain in her shoulder for the first time.

Doctors diagnosed a muscle injury and sent Janine to physiotherapy and occupational therapy. But the pain didn’t go away with treatment or medication. In fact, it got worse.

“Night-time was probably the worst pain. One night, I went straight to A&E and saw a completely different doctor. He could see that I was in a lot of pain and he was probably the only one who took me seriously out of all of the doctors I saw.”