Nick's bowel cancer story

When I was at home for Christmas in 2020, I started noticing changes in my bowel habits. I didn’t really think much of it - I just put it down to indulging over the festive period compared to my usual diet.  

But over the next month there were more changes. And then I noticed there was blood in my poo. My mum encouraged me to book an appointment with my GP and I got an appointment the same day.  

Initially, the GP wasn’t too concerned that it was anything serious. But when I explained that my father had been diagnosed with bowel cancer a decade ago, she requested that I have a colonoscopy as soon as possible. It was quite a painful experience, and I hadn’t appreciated that you could actually see the TV screen showing the camera inside you.  

"Looking at the screen, I immediately knew that something wasn’t quite right. "

After further tests, scans, and a sigmoidoscopy, they confirmed that I had stage 3 bowel cancer. There was an aggressive tumour the size of a golf ball that had broken through my bowel wall and was very close to attaching itself to my bladder.

Treatment needed to begin immediately, so I started 6 weeks of daily chemotherapy and radiotherapy (with weekends off) to try and shrink the tumour. Amazingly, it was a success – the tumour shrank by more than a centimetre. This news made all the struggling with side effects worthwhile, and it meant that we could move on to the next step – which was an operation to remove the tumour.  

The operation went well but in lots of ways it was also harder than I expected. I woke up with lots of scars, with tubes and machines attached to me, and I needed a temporary stoma bag to give my body the time it needed to heal properly from the procedure. I remember feeling really emotional after the surgery.  

"I kept thinking about everything I had gone through already, and how it wasn’t anywhere close to being over."

In between my first operation and my stoma reversal procedure, I still had to endure another 6 months of repeated chemotherapy. It all really affected me mentally and emotionally, and it took me a good few months to get my head around the changes to my body.

I couldn’t have done it without the support of my parents. Moving back home with them when I was diagnosed was the best decision – for all of us.  

They helped in any way that they could. My dad drove me to my appointments, and my mum took the lead in the kitchen – helping me to follow my very strict prescribed diet. It’s like it gave them an element of control – something the cancer couldn’t take over.  

Interestingly, a histology report showed that my cancer wasn’t genetic and that sadly it was just an awful coincidence that my dad and I both had bowel cancer. But it’s scary to think that without that family history, I might not have been offered the colonoscopy that led to my diagnosis.  

"Cancer doesn’t discriminate. It can affect anybody, at any age."

When I look back now, I can’t believe how much I’ve been through. I’m so grateful to be able to say that I’m now in remission and I can get on with my life again - being able to plan for the future is such a heart-warming feeling.

1 in 2 people get cancer now and it’s so important to remember that can include young people too. I hope that I can help even just one person by sharing my story and by encouraging anyone to visit their GP if they feel that something isn’t quite right.