For a month in 2020, Liliana Castaneda, then 14, bled every day. While she originally thought it was her first period, she soon became worried when the bleeding became heavier and wouldn’t stop.

She'd become anemic “because I had been bleeding,” Castaneda, 19, from Chicago, tells TODAY.com. “I had no energy.”

After experiencing heavy bleeding and feeling exhausted, Liliana Casteneda visited her doctor who said her symptoms were due to stress. Courtesy Liliana Castaneda

While doctors first dismissed her heavy bleeding as stress from the COVID-19 pandemic, she soon learned what was wrong — she had clear cell carcinoma, a type of vaginal cancer that is rare for someone so young. She was shocked by the news.

“I heard it,” she says. “But I didn’t really understand it.”

Heavy Bleeding Dis

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