A young woman is urging awareness after what she thought were just heavy periods turned out to be symptom of a rare cancer.

Lydia Brain revealed that she hadn’t gone to the doctor after suffering with heavy periods for three years, being too embarrassed.

However she eventually went to the doctor, after one period was so bad, she had a severe leak while she waited in an airport queue.

She told the Metro: "It was definitely not healthy, I stood there, in the passport queue at Stansted, after bleeding down to my knees on a flight, for 40 minutes.

"Covered with a long coat and the most intense fear and mortifying embarrassment, silently queueing and not making a fuss, I was too embarrassed to tell a male member of staff I needed to get through the queue immediately and go to the toilet, or better yet to a hospital."

When she visited her GP she was told she had uterine tumours so rare, she was only the 11th person ever to be diagnosed with them.

She is now urging other women to be aware that heavy periods can be associated with cancer, saying: "Before my diagnosis, I suffered with heavy periods for what seemed like years, just putting up with them silently, not going to a doctor.

"If we lived in the beautiful, open, free world which I hope we will one day, where women are equal and their bodies are talked about, then perhaps I’d have been diagnosed sooner.

"I felt in a sense that heavy periods and abnormal bleeding were just accepted as something that happened to some women, sometimes."

Lydia soon went on medication to mimic the effects of menopause, and has been advised her to undergo a partial hysterectomy, making her desperate to prevent other women suffering the same fate.