The series of videos was posted to her 77,000 TikTok followers portray a young, vibrant woman in the prime of her life.
The clips, some of which have been viewed hundreds of thousands of times, feature a teacher-turned-influencer Sam Jackson modeling new outfits, soaking up the European sun and giving advice to fellow teachers preparing lessons for an army of precocious teenagers.
But hidden among the typical influencer content lie a handful of videos that reveal the hidden hell the 32-year-old has experienced this year.
In a post posted in early July that has been viewed more than 800,000 times to date, Bolton-born Sam solemnly tells her followers ‘the news no one wanted’: she has stage four bowel cancer cancer.
At least, she thought, it was a disease she was familiar with and could predict a treatment plan. Information she found online said her people had been living in advanced stages of the disease for several years.
She knew the condition was on the rise among people of her generation.
Only within weeks, her world was turned upside down again, when an internal scan revealed an even more sinister reality.
The cancer was actually in her appendix – the small, tube-like organ attached to the colon and home to some of our gut bacteria.
Sam Jackson, 32, has been struck by a deadly cancer that is becoming increasingly common among young people
As it developed there, it is now approaching her stomach wall.
Experts say the disease, medically known as appendiceal cancer, is often more difficult to treat than colon cancer, and is more likely to spread after treatment.
And strangely, it is also increasing – especially among young, fit and healthy Brits.
According to data for England, the incidence of this fatal condition has increased fivefold in the past 20 years. The largest increase can be seen among people between the ages of 20 and 39.
Cancer specialists say it was ‘very rare’ to see a young person with the disease a decade ago. Nowadays, one in three patients with appendiceal cancer is younger than 50 years old. For colon cancer, this is one in twenty.
And experts say appendiceal cancer is uniquely “stealthy” because very often there are virtually no symptoms. There is also no simple, effective test that looks for it.
‘Although bowel cancer may not cause any symptoms, there are often small traces of blood in the stool, and we can detect this through a simple test,’ says Professor Justin Stebbing, oncologist and visiting professor of cancer medicine at Imperial College London.
‘We don’t have that with appendiceal cancer. And either there are no symptoms, or it is a list of very non-specific digestive complaints that can easily be dismissed as mild menstrual cramps, IBS or endometriosis.’
He added: ‘Treatment is generally less successful compared to bowel cancer.’
For the past year, Sam has had “on and off tummy troubles,” including bloating and cramps. Sometimes she had to go to the toilet more urgently than usual.
“I assumed it was food-related because it always seemed to happen when I ate dairy or gluten,” she said. “When I cut them out, it really helped.”
But she struggled to stick to the restricted diet as it led to weight loss and exhaustion.
In March, she visited her doctor, who advised her to keep a food diary to identify common triggers. The symptoms came and went and had little impact on her daily life.
But on Saturday, July 18, she got a huge pain in her stomach, which felt a bit like ‘a severe period pain that wouldn’t go away’.
The sensation was still there on Monday morning, so she made a plan to ‘go off work’ that day to go to the doctor.
‘She felt my stomach and said that due to the severity of the pain I was having it could be appendicitis, so she told me to go to the local emergency room.’
Hospital doctors performed blood tests, CT scans and an ultrasound and gave an IV with painkillers.
At 7 p.m., after several hours of waiting, nurses took her to a side room with a couch and dim lighting and motioned for her to sit next to the doctor.
“I thought, ‘This doesn’t seem right,’” Sam said. “The room they took me to looked like a room I saw on a TV show, where they take people to give them bad news.”
Her hunch was correct. The scans had discovered several suspicious growths in her ovaries and in her digestive system. The signs pointed to cancer that had spread.
Further tests would need to be done to determine the location of the original tumor, but it was likely ovarian or colon cancer, doctors told her.
“You never think it will happen to you,” says Sam, who lives alone. “I was obviously shocked and upset, but I think I still felt like they were wrong and had made a terrible mistake because it all happened so quickly.”
A follow-up colonoscopy – where a camera is inserted into the back passage to look for bowel tumors – along with a biopsy and more scans were carried out the following week.
The results were confusing. Her intestines and ovaries were free of cancer, but doctors had found diseased cells in her stomach lining.
“The wait for answers was unbearable,” she said. ‘Although there was still a glimmer of hope, at this point I had accepted that it was probably stage four cancer.’
Two days later the hospital called and asked her to attend the specialist with her parents, who had traveled from Bolton to London, where Sam now lives.
Another family room, another stern looking supervisor.
The doctors had finally discovered the cause of the problem; a tumor in her appendix that had spread upward to the lining of her stomach.
She would need major surgery and chemotherapy, although doctors were not yet sure which would happen first.
“My mom and dad started crying, I started crying – it was horrible,” she said. ‘The doctor said that although more tests were needed to confirm this, the cancer was probably stage four.’
Sam has documented snippets of her medical journey on her social media platforms
Sam Jackson, from Bolton, is ‘getting on with business’ and enjoying festivals and weddings
Between 14 and 50 percent of patients with advanced appendiceal cancer survive longer than five years, depending on the exact location of the tumor.
At the time of writing, Sam is awaiting confirmation from the hospital as to when she will start her treatment plan.
Scientists remain baffled by the increase in the number of young people developing appendiceal cancer, which is still rare and affects only a few hundred people each year.
It is likely that the same factors that play a role in the rising number of colon cancers are the cause.
‘I suspect it is a combination of factors, such as ultra-processed foods in our diets, antibiotic use and perhaps changes in the gut microbiome,’ explains Professor Stebbing.
‘It could be related to events that happen in childhood, as these cancers often take a very long time to develop.’
Although the appendix is often thought of as a ‘redundant’ organ, it plays a role in digestion and is therefore affected by the food we eat.
“Food goes through it and can get stuck in it,” says Professor Stebbing. “It’s exposed to the contents of our intestines, just like the intestines.”
Meanwhile, Sam ‘just carries on’ – as the cheerful clips on her social media can testify to this.
She started documenting snippets of her medical journey in July and found that supportive feedback from followers was often the only thing keeping her going.
‘I’ve had thousands of messages and around 30,000 followers – and I really didn’t expect that kind of support. I connected with other girls who were going through the same cancer as me, and it made me feel like I wasn’t alone.”
But mostly she shares snippets of her sunny coffee walks and nights out at friends’ weddings. She is preparing to return to work this week.
“I go out to eat, I see my friends and I even went to a festival recently,” she said. ‘I’m trying to be as normal as possible for as long as I can, because I don’t really know how else it could be.
‘People say I’m brave, but what choice do I have? The other option is to admit defeat and stay in bed every day. I can’t do that to myself, so I just keep going, day after day.’
