By Elliott West
“Bowel cancer is cancer found anywhere in the large bowel, which includes the colon and rectum. It’s one of the most common types of cancer in the UK”.
NHS
Introduction
Cancer is a terrible disease, a disease that comes in many forms, killing many and sparing only the lucky few. Medical advancement in chemotherapy and radiation treatments has meant that more people are surviving this potential death sentence but to date, there is no known cure for this complex illness. One form of cancer that often remains dormant and undetected for years is bowel cancer. A slow but aggressive cancer that can spread to other organs in the body and sadly is caught in many cases too late. The recent death of BBC journalist George Alagiah aged 67, shows how important it is to get a stool sample kit and get it tested at the earliest opportunity if you experience any of the symptoms of this lethal killer. These include discomfort or pain in the right side of your abdomen, feeling sick, poor appetite and weight loss.
Personal Experience
I lost my Mum, Marion to bowel cancer in 2002. She was only 54. For me, it was a bolt out of the blue and to be honest, she kept it well hidden. She must have been in excruciating pain, developing a tumour on the side of her stomach and when she attempted to go and see her GP, she wasn’t able to because it was an Easter bank holiday weekend. Tragedy struck when she collapsed at home but wasn’t able to contact anyone. She lay unconscious on the floor for several days before a worried neighbour, climbed a ladder and broke in. My Mum was in the hospital for several weeks but sadly she had a stroke. The doctor took me into a side room and said that it was just a matter of time.
My Mum died several weeks later from respiratory failure and I got to the hospital too late. The worst experience you can go through is to see a parent dead in the chapel of rest. This awful disease had drastically aged her, leaving her hair pure white and her body covered in bed sores where she was unable to move. Marion indeed had bipolar disorder, was an alcoholic and smoked, often not eating for days, refusing help and stopped taking her medication. Yet maybe if she had sought medical help earlier, she may have been able to live longer by having an operation to remove part of her bowel and a colostomy bag fitted.
Living in Silence
The main purpose of writing this piece is to highlight awareness of bowel cancer. So many people especially men, choose to ignore the signs. This form of cancer is a ticking time bomb, a form of cancer that starts with a polyp that becomes a tumour and grows slowly. As soon as you have blood in your stools for several days, you should contact your GP. Bowel cancer or colorectal cancer spreads in the colon, rectum and liver whose initial symptoms could be mistaken for anaemia. Fatigue and weakness are two examples. Bowel cancer has four stages from the appearance of the tumour in the inner bowel to when it has grown through the lining of the bowel wall with varying degrees of severity. George Alagiah had stage 4 bowel cancer, initially diagnosed in 2014 under his passing in 2023. Although thought to have gone into remission, the cancer returned in 2018 and was deemed to be terminal.
Nearly 43,000 people are diagnosed with bowel cancer in the UK every year with a five-year expectancy for stage 4 bowel cancer at about 14%. The highest percentage of deaths for colorectal cancer is in the 55-64 age bracket with 19.4% deaths but the disease remains a constant threat in all age groups. The simple way to catch bowel cancer is to check your poo.
