I first noticed blood on the toilet paper when I wiped and didn't think much of it. I led a healthy lifestyle and was busy running around after my daughters and expected it to resolve itself naturally.
I knew I had issues – with the urgency, frequency and bleeding I was having, but still – I wanted to live in denial that there was really a problem. Surely this could just be haemorrhoids – right? Haemorrhoids or not, with two young children, I had to be sure, so I called my doctor. Thankfully for me, I had a doctor who listened, and she sent me for blood tests and a colonoscopy.
The colonoscopy revealed a tumour in my lower bowel and they were 99 per cent sure it was cancerous. Bowel cancer had never crossed my mind. WHAT? How is this even possible at 36?!?
Let me tell you, it is. Bowel cancer is not an old person’s disease.
We received the official pathology report confirming the tumour was malignant and local lymph nodes were involved. And the rest as they say is history.
And so the treatment begins. Five weeks of radiation and oral chemo to reduce the size of the tumour. Then off to surgery I went, with the assumption that we “caught it just in time” – at a Stage 3; only local lymph nodes involved. The surgeon removed 60cm of my large intestine and lucky enough I didn’t receive a temporary ileostomy as previously planned.
A week or so after surgery the surgeon revealed my pathology report from the tumour. The lymph nodes that were taken out tested positive for cancer. And there were suspicious lymph nodes in my chest that may have been missed.
From there I felt as if I was on remote control. One doctor’s appointment was set, then another and another. I was scheduled to have surgery for a port to be inserted and for chemotherapy to begin straight away.
12 rounds every two weeks of chemo FOLFOX which I would also take a takeaway bottle home with me.
11 months I was cancer free. Then on my birthday of 2020 I received even more devastating news, after early treatment appeared successful, was the news that nobody wants, the cancer was back and has spread to my lungs and lymph nodes around my kidney.
The cancer is now incurable, and I’ll have to undergo chemotherapy for the rest of my life. More radiation to different parts of my body was also administered to slow it down.
It's my family that makes me want to fight cancer as hard as I can! We're constantly in the pursuit of great experiences so the girls have wonderful memories to look back on. My girls are the reason I get out of bed and continue to fight the cancer. I can't quit, for their sake.