As Bella Johnston picked up her guitar and opened her mouth to sing, a familiar wave of nausea swept over her.

Even though she’d felt fine moments earlier, she knew she was about to throw up.

‘The vomiting would come out of nowhere,’ she tells me. ‘It was so violent, my body would convulse and jerk… I just couldn’t control it.’

It was one of many serious but unexplained symptoms the then 19-year-old had been suffering with for more than three years.

Bella was 15 and living in country NSW when she’d first started to feel unwell. 

‘It started with low blood pressure,’ she says.

‘I’d wake up in the morning, sit up and immediately have to put my head between my legs to stop myself passing out.

‘I was also completely exhausted and suffering with mood swings, but, you know, I was a teenage girl so nobody thought that was strange.’

Because she was vomiting and had unexplained weight loss, doctors diagnosed Bella Johnston with anorexia and bulimia – which she knew she didn’t have

She suffered with vomiting, a severe cough and other symptoms – but doctors couldn’t find anything wrong with her

It was the racking cough and violent throwing up that really started to worry Bella. 

‘I missed a lot of school and when I was there I’d have to run out of class to throw up.’

Bella was also losing weight rapidly, dropping from 65kg (143lbs) to 58kg (128lbs) in a matter of weeks. Her mother took her to the doctor who was perplexed and sent her for blood tests, which came back clear.

‘After that, they really didn’t know what to do with me,’ she says. 

Due to junior doctors travelling in and out of regional practices as part of their training, Bella would see a different doctor each time she visited, which made it difficult to get to the bottom of her symptoms.

‘I was prescribed an anti-nausea drug for the sickness and codeine cough syrup, but no one actually tried to find an answer to why I had these symptoms,’ she says. 

When she developed a large lump on the right side of her throat, doctors dismissed it as glandular fever.  

Over the next year, Bella missed almost half of her classes at school and began to feel increasingly isolated. She lost more weight and often felt so sick she’d spend days on end in bed. 

By the time she was diagnosed with a rare cancer, the tumour in her neck resembled a piece of ‘rotten fruit’

A keen musician who loved to sing and play guitar, Bella found she no longer had the energy to pick up her instrument and singing was painful because of all the coughing and throwing up.

Then she saw a new doctor. Taking note of her weight loss and frequent vomiting, he diagnosed her with anorexia and bulimia.

Her parents accepted the diagnosis.

‘I wish now I’d had to the autonomy to say, “That isn’t what’s wrong with me”,’ she says. ‘But that meant standing up to doctors and my parents. I was 16 years old and I was so tired… I almost wanted to believe that was what was wrong with me just so I’d have an answer.’

But deep down, Bella knew she’d been misdiagnosed. She wanted to eat but had no appetite. Anything she did eat, she involuntarily threw up. And body image was the absolute last thing on her mind while dealing with all her other symptoms. 

Despite this, she went along with the treatment plan, which included family therapy. 

‘I’d have to go to each session with my mum and dad and two brothers, who were just 10 and 12 at the time, and I’d have to weigh myself in front of them,’ she says.

After being misdiagnosed with anorexia and bulimia, Bella lost trust in doctors and began to look to ‘wellness influencers’ like Belle Gibson (pictured) for tips on how to get better

‘When I’d lost more weight, I was accused of throwing up deliberately in the shower.’

That Christmas, Bella recalls eating her Christmas dinner, keen to show her family she didn’t have an eating disorder. When she threw up moments after finishing, her dad told she had “ruined Christmas” because he thought she’d done it on purpose.  

Bella says the therapy and her parents’ belief that she was deceiving them caused a huge family rift. After she turned 18, she refused to attend any more family therapy sessions.

She went to university to study PR and communication but by then she was in constant pain. The lump on her neck had got bigger, her hair was falling out, and she was constantly sick with fever. 

Bella dropped out after six months, moved to Melbourne, and tried to scrape a living with bar work and the occasional gig.

But when she couldn’t get through a song without feeling like she was about to throw up, she felt nothing but despair.

The lump on her neck had only grown and she’d lost even more weight. 

The scar on Bella’s neck after her surgery 

She thought about going back to the doctor but decided not to.

‘I felt so gaslit by then. I’d just lost all my trust in the medical system,’ she says.

Instead, Bella went to see a naturopath and began to follow wellness accounts on Instagram that promoted alternative therapies, clean eating and green smoothies.

‘I remember eating a lot of turkey mince, sweet potato and avocado,’ she says. 

‘I did a 30-day green smoothie “challenge” where I made a different green smoothie each day.’ 

Among the accounts Bella followed was that of now-infamous cancer faker Belle Gibson. Then known only as a wellness influencer, Belle Gibson had 200,000 followers and her content was gaining huge traction.

‘I remember thinking, “This woman has cured her cancer, which is the worst thing that could ever happen to you,”‘ Bella says. 

‘It gave me hope that I could fix myself, no matter what was wrong with me.’  

Bella started making recipes from The Whole Pantry, Gibson’s wellness book, and read everything she posted on Instagram in the hope something she tried would make her feel better.

She tried beetroot soup, bone broth and Epsom salt baths – all recommended by Gibson. 

One day in August 2014, Bella burnt her hand while cooking and went to a local clinic to get it treated.

‘The doctor took one look at me and I knew I looked like death, and he said to me, “Is there anything else you want to talk about?”‘ she says. 

‘It was the first time someone seemed to actually want to listen to me so I told him about my symptoms and showed him the lump in my neck.’

Bella was sent immediately to a larger hospital for an ultrasound. Afterwards, the nurse took one look at it and rushed to get a doctor. Then another doctor came in.

‘Seeing the way the three of them were looking at the scan, I knew something was wrong,’ she says.

Bella was sent for a CAT scan and told to return two days later for the results. In the meantime, she called her dad, who drove three hours to be with her for the appointment.

‘The doctor told me the lump was a tumour and I had a rare form of cancer called paraganglioma,’ she says.

‘I didn’t even cry; I felt so relieved. I just thought, finally. Finally! With a diagnosis, there is a path for treatment.’

A few days later, Bella underwent an eight-hour operation to remove the tumour, which had wrapped itself around the veins and nerves in her neck and the base of her skull. 

‘The doctor told me the tumour looked like a piece of rotten fruit when he removed it,’ she says. ‘It was completely blackened.’  

Even after the tumour, measuring 7cm by 5cm, had been successfully removed, leaving her with a scar from underneath her chin right round to behind her ear, her prognosis was bleak.

There was a chance the cancer could have spread to Bella’s brain, so she was told she needed a course of radiotherapy. 

At that time, her mind had been so warped by mistrust of doctors and Belle Gibson’s alternative medicine content online that she initially wanted to refuse.

Eventually, it was her dad who convinced her she needed the treatment. ‘He said there’s absolutely no way you’re not doing this,’ she tells me. 

But while she endured the gruelling treatment, Bella still sought help and support from Gibson. 

After trying one of her smoothie recipes, Bella left a comment on Gibson’s page, thanking her for the suggestion.

‘I wrote a long message telling her I was a big fan, telling her about my diagnosis and asking her if she’d be keen to meet for coffee,’ Bella says.

Bella, now 30, is cancer free but lives in fear of her cancer coming back

Of Belle Gibson’s cancer lies, she says: ‘I pity her. I think she was lonely and isolated, and people do crazy things when they’re isolated’

While Gibson never replied to that message, she did respond to comments Bella made asking for further suggestions on things to add to her ‘healing’ diet. 

Gibson suggested turmeric and apricot kernels, both of which Bella began to consume, despite the fact she was still using a nasal gastric tube.

In total, Bella believes she interacted directly with Gibson ‘three or four times’. 

After completing radiotherapy, which had caused half of her hair to fall out and zapped all of her energy, Bella knew she still had long road to recovery ahead of her.

Then, one day, she was reading the news on her phone when she saw a story about Belle Gibson being under investigation after she’d failed to donate the funds she said she’d raised for a young boy with cancer. 

‘I thought, surely not?’ she says 

‘I was still so unwell, it was hard to take in. But the next thing I read said that Belle had never had cancer in the first place, that she’d admitted to lying about the whole thing.’

Bella watched in disbelief as veteran journalist Tara Brown interviewed Gibson on 60 Minutes. ‘She came across as a crazy person,’ Bella admits.

But actually her feelings towards the cancer faker are more complex than that. 

‘I pity her. I think she was lonely and isolated, and people do crazy things when they’re isolated,’ she says.

Bella pictured with her boyfriend Harrison

‘I think she enjoyed the attention. She built a community without ever thinking about the grand plan and it just got out of hand.’

Bella, of course, doesn’t for a second condone Gibson’s behaviour and has deep sympathy for those who lost their cash and were lied to in her scheme.

She also thinks she ‘probably’ would have refused the radiotherapy that saved her life had her father not stepped in, because of Gibson’s influence.

Bella is now 30 and thankfully her cancer has never returned, although she lives with a constant cough and cannot tolerate certain foods.

She can no longer sing and doesn’t have the energy to play her guitar, which she describes as ‘the tragedy of it all’. 

‘I’ll probably always be chronically ill and I do live with the fear of the cancer coming back,’ she says.

But now, with her remarkable survival story and visible battle scar, she’s confident doctors will at least listen to her if that ever happens.