I am including this section in my story, just so people can see what they should be looking out for (I only looked this up after my diagnosis). The main symptoms to look out for on Bowel Cancer UK’s website (https://www.bowelcanceruk.org.uk/about-bowel-cancer/symptoms/) are:
From this list, I never noticed any blood in the lead up to the diagnosis. My bowel habits never really changed, occasionally I perhaps couldn’t manage to go to the toilet, or sometimes I went a bit more frequently, but again there was nothing in that to make me worry something was wrong. I also never noticed a pain or lump in my tummy.
However, I did have the unexplained weight loss and the extreme tiredness for no obvious reason; it never even occurred to me that it would be bowel cancer. This is why I will urge anyone to go and get themselves checked out if they notice anything wrong/out of the ordinary, I hope it would be nothing, or something easily resolved, but equally I could’ve been seen a bit earlier and maybe in better shape than I was, had I acted sooner.
