Fit and healthy mum-of-two faces bowel cancer at just 35 years old – and urges YOU to check for the signs however gross and whatever your age
FIT, healthy and a veggie for 25 years.
At 35 years old, Deborah James isn’t the typical candidate for cancer.
And that’s the point, she says… “you really are never too young”.
Never too young to find blood in your stools, never too young to contemplate not seeing your kids grow up, never too young to be diagnosed with bowel cancer.
That's the reality the marathon running, ex-national gymnast now faces.
Just before Christmas Deborah found herself lying in a hospital theatre, her doctor probing her bowel to check for any lumps or abnormalities, any sign of disease.
The 35-year-old recalled, “the room fell silent”.
Despite her gulping down mouthfuls of gas and air to take the edge off the experience, the mum-of-two turned to the screen.
Staring back at her was a tumour, her tumour.
Deborah is the deputy head teacher at an outstanding secondary school in Surrey, her job is to help kids learn.
I kept going back to the doctors. I had tests and they came back normal. But, I kept thinking, ‘it’s not normal to s*** blood, and it’s not IBS’
Deborah James
So it was second nature to her when she booked in to have a colonoscopy, after six months of spotting blood in her stools, to “google the s*** out of it”.
“I knew what a healthy bowel would look like,” she told The Sun Online.
She said when the silence was finally broken, it was a question that made her heart sink: “Do you have anyone with you?"
That was the day Deborah learned she had stage 3 bowel cancer.
But, the signs had been there for at least six months, she admitted.
A couple of years ago she first noticed changes to her bowel habits.
But, having been told she was likely suffering irritable bowel syndrome, she filed her concerns away to the back of her mind.
Six months ago things became significantly worse.
"I started going to the loo lots," she said.
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"Then I started passing blood. That's the point I thought, 'something is wrong'."
Even then she did what any 35-year-old would do and after consulting Dr Google, rationalised "it must be haemorrhoids".
"I thought 'it must be something else', you never think you could be that one chance in a million," she said.
For Deborah the niggling doubts she had were masked further by the fact she had three sets of tests - blood and stool samples - "and they all came back normal".
The last set, just a month before she was diagnosed, showed no trace of anything wrong.
Yet, Deborah was overcome by a sixth sense.
"I kept going back to the doctors," she said. "I had tests and they came back normal.
"But I kept thinking, 'it's not normal to s*** blood, and it's not IBS'.
"I knew there was something wrong."
Worried, she decided to take matters into her own hands.
She booked in for a colonoscopy - a test that allows doctors to look at the lining of the colon using a flexible tube armed with a camera.
It was then Deborah came face-to-face with her tumour.
As she was wheeled back to the recovery room, where her husband Sebastien was waiting for her, Deborah said she shouted at her doctor: "I know you've seen something, you're not telling me what it is."
WHAT ARE THE KEY SIGNS OF BOWEL CANCER TO WATCH FOR?
Bowel cancer can be treated, but the earlier it is diagnosed the better a patient's chance of survival.
If you suffer any symptoms, however embarrassing you may think they are, go to see your doctor.
GPs deal with bowels, tummy problems, diarrhoea and all sorts on a regular basis, so what may seem grim to you, is part of their normal working day.
The key signs you could have bowel cancer include:
- bleeding from your bottom, and/or blood in your poo
- a change in bowel habit lasting three weeks or longer
- unexplained weight loss
- extreme tiredness for no obvious reason
- a pain or lump in your tummy
Most of the time, a person suffering these symptoms won't have bowel cancer.
Other health problems can cause similar symptoms, but it is vital doctors rule out cancer early on.
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Turning to her hubby, she yelled: "They've found a tumour."
While in most cases doctors will wait for tests to confirm a diagnosis, Deborah praised her consultant for being straight with her.
"My consultant was incredible. He told me, 'I know you know we've found something, yes it is a tumour and while I can't confirm it, in my professional opinion it is cancerous'," she said.
Within an hour, Deborah's consultant had a surgeon on the phone and had booked her an MRI scan.
"Things snowballed after that," she said.
But not before the couple could stop off en route home to Barnes to buy a bottle of wine to help them take stock of what was happening.
An anxious wait over the weekend for test results was coupled with a need to break the news to their two kids, Hugo, nine and Eloise, seven.
"You feel numb, shocked, like you're in a dream that's happening to someone else," the 35-year-old said.
"Then over the next few nights you wake up at 4am and you say to yourself, 'is this a dream', and you're confronted by reality, 'no you still have cancer'.
BOWEL CANCER BY NUMBERS
- Bowel cancer is the second biggest cancer killer in the UK
- Every 15 minutes someone in the UK is diagnosed with bowel cancer
- More than 41,000 are diagnosed each year
- More than 2,540 people under 50 are diagnosed in the UK each year
- One in 14 men and one in 19 women will be diagnosed in their lifetime
- Around 290,000 people living in the UK today have been diagnosed with the disease
- 15,900 people lose their life to bowel cancer each year - that's 44 people each day
- Every 30 minutes, someone in the UK dies from the disease
- More than nine out of 10 people diagnosed with stage 1 bowel cancer survive five years or more
- For stage 2 bowel cancer that figure is eight in 10
- For stage 3 six out of 10
- And for stage 4 less than one in 10 people survive five years or more
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"Then we had to face telling the kids, your first instinct as a parent is to protect them.
"We didn't want them to think about it.
"But actually the best thing was to just be open with them.
"You don't say 'mummy is going to die'.
"We told them I was going to have an operation, and chemotherapy to make her better.
"It was very emotional telling them."
Since December Deborah has had a third of her bowel removed and has just started six months of chemotherapy - once every two weeks.
In preparation for chemo, Deborah was adamant she would have fun and enjoy herself before the next round of her treatment began.
"You come out of the operation and feel really low, it's an incredibly dark and pretty depressing place," she said.
"But I am really lucky I have a really supportive husband, family and friends around me.
"You think, 'how the hell will I ever get out of bed?
This absolutely blindsided me. It was 7pm on a Thursday evening, it is something you never thought in your wildest dreams was possible
Deborah
"That's when your mum comes round and tells you you need to get out of bed.
"Then you have a choice.
"My prognosis is 50/50, I can either spend the next five years Googling, and worrying that I might die, or I can try and have a bit of fun.
"When you have cancer people really get behind you, they ask how they can help.
"The best thing for me was to do normal things, go to the cinema, have lunch, go shopping.
"What you realise is there are windows of opportunity and you have to make the most of them."
Reflecting on what's she's been through, Deborah, who has , urged others to stop feeling embarrassed and learn to talk about poo.
"The only times we talk about poo is when we have kids, or we're in hospital," she said.
"When you have kids you're always talking about their pooing habits and when you're in hospital medics are only interested in asking about what your bowels are doing and if they're working or not.
"And really nobody else talks about it.
"For me, the thing that made people more aware that something was wrong was when I started taking pictures of my poo.
"The biggest problem is having to describe what's going on.
"Doctors only started to talk me seriously when I started taking pictures.
"My symptoms were quite severe, but I didn't realise, I showed my sister and she was shocked.
"If you're experiencing problems don't be scared to take pictures to show your doctor."
She added: "You spend life worrying about all these little things in life, especially me, I am naturally an anxious person.
"But this absolutely blindsided me.
"It was 7pm on a Thursday evening, it is something you never thought in your wildest dreams was possible."
Deborah is raising money for Bowel Cancer UK's Never Too Young campaign, that helps fight for improved diagnosis, treatment and care of young patients battling bowel cancer.
NEVER TOO YOUNG
Bowel Cancer UK is leading the fight for change for young people diagnosed with bowel cancer.
Their Never Too Young campaign is calling for a change to clinical practice and policy to stop people under 50 being missed.
Every year, 2,540 young people are told they have bowel cancer.
While this is just six per cent of those diagnosed with the disease, the number is slowly growing.
There has been a 45 per cent rise in the number of under 50s diagnosed with the disease in the past 10 years.
And three out of five people diagnosed under the age of 50 will be diagnosed when the cancer is already in the later stages of disease.
The charity's research has shown younger patients have a very different experience of diagnosis, treatment and care.
And, the reality is, young people are typically diagnosed late because their symptoms can be blamed on other, less serious, but more common diseases.
Deborah Alsina, the charity's CEO, the aim of the campaign is to fight for improved diagnosis, treatment and care of young patients.
She told The Sun Online one of the key problems is a lack of awareness of the disease among young people.
"They think it's a disease that affects older people, which is predominantly true," she said.
A survey of young patients last year revealed only one in five young patients were aware they could be at risk of bowel cancer before they were diagnosed.
But, more than that, there is also a lack of awareness among doctors and medics, Deborah added.
"As a GP you may only see one case of bowel cancer in someone under 50 during their entire career," she said.
"And the reality is bowel cancer symptoms can be quite vague.
"We hear from patients all the time how they thought their funny tummy was just a hangover from holiday, or that their changed bowel habits just come and go.
"Around 50 per cent don't present with classic red flag symptoms."
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