A 22-year-old from the U.K. has died from an aggressive form of cancer after her doctors reportedly initially mistook her disease for pregnancy.
Demi Wright of Colchester died "peacefully" on Feb. 23 after a brief battle with the disease, an obituary stated.
The young woman's father, Chris Wright, told the Daily-Gazette his youngest child was a happy and cheerful soul.
"She didn't have a bad bone in her body," he told the newspaper. "She had an infectious, beautiful smile and it showed her personality off."
The makeup artist had a benign tumor in her liver as a child, and had checkups into her teens as a result, her family told Metro UK.
Last November, Demi Wright began experiencing pains in her side. When she went to the doctor, they found she was emitting human chorionic gonadotropin (HCG), a hormone emitted during pregnancy, Metro UK reported.
Though an increase in HCG is common in pregnant women, the hormone's level can also increase if there are certain cancers in the body, such as liver or ovarian cancer, according to the Canadian Cancer Center.
Doctors thought Demi Wright might be pregnant, and scheduled an ultrasound.
"It was strange because she had been using the contraceptive pill and there were no other signs of her being pregnant," her father told Metro U.K. "I went to an ultrasound with her and they were looking to see what was happening."
After finding no baby, medical staff then performed a laparoscopic surgery to try and figure out what was going on. They eventually discovered Demi Wright had a tumor on her liver and the cancer had spread through her body, Metro UK reported.
Chris Wright said she never cried, even after learning her cancer was terminal.
"I absolutely broke down and she patted the bed and told me to sit by her and she gave me a big hug and said, 'It's going to be okay,'" he told Metro UK. "She was a real trooper."
The woman died three weeks later. She left behind her mother, father, brother, sister, and many friends and family members, according to the obituary.
Her boyfriend, Mitch Gregory, told the Daily-Gazette the family feels "robbed."
"It needs to be stressed how much courage she had," he said. "She's our inspiration now."