Scoop  Regional

May 20, 2011

The Human Face of Bowel Cancer

Patients tell their stories for Bowel Cancer Awareness Week June 6-12, 2011

Bowel cancer is New Zealand’s most common cancer. Beat Bowel Cancer Aotearoa’s awareness week June 6-12 aims to show that bowel cancer hits Kiwis irrespective of age, race or gender.Their message: Don’t sit on your symptoms! Get yourself checked. The disease is detectable, treatable and survivable.

More than 100 New Zealanders die every month from bowel cancer. Here are two patients who are championing the awareness week and living life to the full. But, they have very different stories to tell.

Mary Bradley Mary was diagnosed with bowel cancer when she was 28. She’s now been cancer free for four years and she can’t wait to hit the gold standard of five. Mary has determination and vivacity in spades. At the time of her diagnosis she had a six month old baby boy and plans for a big family. But after tackling her first post-baby run, she felt what she thought was a hernia-type lump in her abdomen and went off to the doctor.

“I was embarrassed to go actually because I felt so healthy,” she says. That visit led to more tests, and then an initiation into the arts of oncology, surgery and chemotherapy. As if they weren’t enough to consider, there was another problem. When you get cancer at such a young age and require chemo, your fertility becomes a concern. So, while counting down to the start of her treatment, Mary embarked on an information gathering exercise that she says was hard work because bowel cancer management isn’t ‘stream-lined’ for young women.

Her fact-finding mission produced a number of strategies, one of which involved lining her sister up for surrogacy. “Cancer is a family affair!” she laughs. Mary was lucky. Despite her oncologist feeling that she should wait, her second son Josh was born without a hitch in 2009. Her most recent news: baby Ben arrived just seven weeks ago! Mary is determined to get people checking their symptoms so that survivor stories like hers become the common ones. She lives in West Auckland with her sons and husband.

Claire Wilson Claire is about to turn 30. She’s throwing a big birthday bash on June 4 in Wellington, but not before she marries the love of her life this weekend in Arrowtown. Since surgery for bowel cancer last October, Claire’s living every day as it comes.

Claire investigated her tummy troubles while she was in the States. She had pain, bouts of diarrhoea and eventually a lump in her abdomen. She put it down to stress but had herself checked out to be sure. Tests showed she was anaemic and had ‘birth marks’ on her liver which are not uncommon. As a precaution, doctors advised her to have a colonoscopy but Claire was satisfied that her birth marks were far less pressing than a planned trip to Central America, and she set off on the next leg of her adventures.

Once back in New Zealand, Claire’s pain had increased. This time tests showed she’d been misdiagnosed and she in fact had advanced colorectal cancer that had reached her liver, lymphatic system and lungs. This cancer was aggressive. Claire says that bowel cancer doesn’t receive the attention here that it deserves. “Southland and Otago have the highest incidence of bowel cancer in the developed world. Bowel cancer kills three times more people yearly than the national average road toll and its mortality rate is only surpassed, barely, by lung cancer.

Despite my age, the symptoms I experienced were text book. I am going to die from a potentially treatable cancer. I hope my story highlights the symptoms of bowel cancer so other families and communities may avoid the painful journey I am currently undergoing.”
Read Claire’s blog at http://chemoheavyhardcore.wordpress.com/

ENDS

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