After having some consistent unusual symptoms of bowel pain, extreme fatigue, weight loss, bleeding from the bowel and night sweats, I practically banged on my GP's door for help, was booked in for a colonoscopy shortly afterwards, all while being there for my sister who was diagnosed five weeks before me with stage IV bowel cancer (tumours tested, showed it was not genetic). It was just something we both got at the same time. I was 36 years old, and my sister was 45.
I woke up from my colonoscopy to be told there was a mass in the sigmoid part of my colon. The Gastroenterologist handed me a business card with my sister’s doctor’s name on it; that is when I knew 100%, I also had bowel cancer.
I was fortunate to see my sister’s doctor. I was booked in for all the blood tests and scans to determine a stage III diagnosis with two lymph nodes affected.
My first thoughts were how am I going to do this with my extremely high phobia of needles and the coordination of my sister’s treatment too.
I was numb and my brain went into overload but thankful I had the same team of doctors that my sister had, which helped so much. Still in the fog of it all, I was only capturing bits and pieces of information and could only take it one day to the next, which I guess was the best way to go about it as anything more than that was too much.
My sister and I were fortunate enough to have our other sister take an extended amount of time off work to take us to our chemotherapy and radiation, which was every day for the first six weeks. I had no time to freeze my eggs and had no choice really but to go into early menopause. Basically, when your doctor explains your best chance of survival, you just get on top of that treatment straight away.
Once treatment was completed, we had a six-week break followed by our bowel resection surgeries, one day apart from each other which was a six-hour op each and some time spent in ICU.
I woke up in an incredible amount of pain, which lasted weeks. Doctors were on the case and realised I had caught an infection from my drain tube as well as having a leak at the join where my new join was. I ended up with a three-month hospital stay to treat all of it and another surgery to fix it.
Once I could get back on my feet, six months of clean-up chemo commenced.
After a year, my sister and I both went into remission. We knew at this point that our lives had stopped for so long and the appointments and countless hospital visits had become our new normal. We had no idea how to navigate a new life after cancer.
Six months later, my sister relapsed with some cancer in her liver. We lost her a little less than a year from her second diagnosis.
We are learning to live life a different way without her; we miss her so much. I am determined to create awareness for people in their 20s-40s, that you are never too young to be diagnosed with this disease, and an early diagnosis can save your life.