Belinda S’s story

My bowel cancer journey is something I never could have imagined would become part of my story.

At the time, I was busy running my own business and, like so many of us, putting everything and everyone else first. I put my symptoms down to stress and the demands of work, never imagining there could be something seriously wrong. It wasn’t until I fainted while on holidays that things started to unravel. Blood tests revealed I was anaemic, and I was referred for a colonoscopy. That was the moment my world was turned upside down. Suddenly, life as I knew it changed, and I was faced with a diagnosis I never expected.

Surgery was booked, and thankfully, it went very well. But the journey was far from over. Life with a stoma was incredibly challenging, both physically and emotionally, and it pushed me in ways I never expected. I then went through six months of chemotherapy, which brought its own set of complications and challenges. Having never spent a night in hospital before my diagnosis, I found myself admitted five times and spending more than a month in hospital over the course of the past year. It was a confronting and exhausting experience that changed my perspective on so many things.

I have been incredibly fortunate to have so much love and support around me throughout this journey, and I will always be grateful for the people who have stood beside me. But being a single person navigating cancer has also brought a unique kind of loneliness. There are moments when you have to find the strength to face the fear, the uncertainty and the hard days on your own. And even now, having finished treatment and being able to call myself a survivor, I am discovering that this chapter brings its own challenges. You expect finishing treatment to mean getting your life back, but the physical and emotional impacts don’t simply disappear when treatment ends. There is the anxiety, the recovery, the adjustment to a body and a life that have changed and learning to trust that things will be okay again.

I know I am one of the lucky ones, and I never take that for granted. But being lucky doesn’t mean this journey hasn’t been incredibly hard, or that it hasn’t changed me. Cancer has changed my life in ways I am still coming to terms with. It has tested my strength, challenged my independence and made me look at life, work and what really matters very differently. I am proud of how far I have come, grateful to still be here, and hopeful for what lies ahead. But I am also learning that it is okay to acknowledge the hard parts; to grieve the life I had before cancer, and to give myself time to find my feet again. Surviving cancer is something to celebrate but learning how to live beyond it is a journey of its own.

My one piece of advice:

Be your biggest advocate – listen to your body and check things out early, don’t wait.