28-year-old thought he tore a muscle and was told he had ‘seven months to live’

A Eminent 28-year-old scientist thought he pulled a muscle, got the worst news, a devastating diagnosis which left her in shock.

the British Kirsti Smith has been included in the prestigious list Forbes 30 Belowin the category of science and health from Europe, was diagnosed with a rare heart cancerrelationships The mail.

He cardiac angiosarcoma it is a type of tumor that occurs in the heart, usually in the right atrium, according to Johns Hopkins medicineand obstructs the entry or exit of blood from the organ.

chest pain, muscle pain

Smitten woke up suddenly with a severe chest pain last November.

Since he traveled extensively in the United States for work and took planes, his mother thought he might be a clotso they went to the hospital.

“All my health was absolutely fine. I haven’t had any problems with my heart rate or anything,” Smitten said Southwest News Service.

He revealed that doctors suspected he had a muscle traction caused by physical activity and they instructed him to take some codeine.

However, he sensed that something else was wrong. It was then that waited 11 hours for a CAT scan, which revealed to heart tumor.

“They found a 6cm tumor in my heart, which, of course, was shocking, because I didn’t have any other symptoms before,” he noted. He loved playing hockey and soccer.

At first, doctors didn’t think the tumor was malignant because it’s an extremely rare diagnosis.

The worst diagnosis and unprecedented surgery

to the doctors it took three months for Smitten to be diagnosed with cardiac angiosarcoma.

worse, the outlook was bad: when they finally did, they were told there was a 68% chance he’d die within the next year.

The bad news included this the tumor could not be operated onbut because Smitten is a scientist, she did more research on the disease and found that some people had been removed and reconstructed “practically the whole heart” in surgery.

Smitten received a second opinion from Marsden Royal Hospital, a cancer treatment center in London. They agreed to perform the surgery, which would only give him a 10% chance of living another five years.

Because this cancer affects so few people, there isn’t much published research on the disease, and despite the fact that the disease is so serious, your heart is still working at full capacityspread.

“If you see me now and before when I’m diagnosed, I still look absolutely fine,” Smitten explains. And he points out: “If it weren’t for the PICC (peripherally inserted central catheter) on my arm, no one would know I’m sick.”

“My friends say, ‘How are you getting through all of this? Because you look exactly the same. I can still walk and exercise like it’s nothing,” warns lecturers around the world.

Work of scientist and drug

Despite the devastating diagnosis, the young woman continues to work in her company, MetalloBio, which develops a new class of antibiotics.

He was completing his doctorate in microbiology at the University of Sheffield, where they created a drug that kills antibiotic-resistant superbugs, including those that can cause conditions such as pneumonia, as well as urinary tract and blood infectionsreported The mail .

Other pharmaceutical companies became interested in the development, and Smitten was offered funding to found MetalloBio in March 2021.

It is no coincidence that the scientist is now realizing how important her potential medicine can be.

“Now I understand how important my job is, because if I have an infection I have about an hour to get intravenous antibiotics before it becomes fatal because with chemotherapy I don’t have an immune system right now,” Smitten said.

The scientist found a Facebook group for those with cardiac angiosarcoma, but he confided that he had difficulty finding patients with the same disease.

“Usually they are people in their 20s to 30s. I don’t think they know why, and at that moment I had my whole life ahead of me, “she said, and closed with a lapidary sentence:”I thought I was going to have kids and a family and they told me I had seven months to live.”