Daron’s story

I’d had my head up my arse for too long. At least a year, maybe four.

I ignored the symptoms, made excuses and sucked it up when I shouldn’t have – blood in the toilet, excessive visits to the dunny around the clock, sudden weight loss, abdominal cramps, and saturating night sweats.

All things I could find an excuse for.

Stress… I’m running heaps so I’m burning fat … too many beers… sh*t that was a good curry… maybe gastro. Covid?

But a persistent wife kept pushing me to see a doctor until I finally relented after a sudden drop in energy, terrible gut aches, diabolical dunny action and a physical crash that even had me wondering during the night if I should just call an ambulance.

I was very fit for my age (47 at the time), daily exercise and footy on weekends, but the pandemic locked down the planet and it felt like physical changes I had ignored for a long time soon came to the fore.

By the end of 2020 the gut pain, night sweats and bowel frequency became too much, so I parked my male stubbornness and saw a doctor. I soon had a digit up my backside, and she sent me for tests – blood, poo and a scan.

The early diagnosis was an abscess on my bowel, but a colonoscopy would confirm exactly what was trying to rip my insides out.

If you’ve never had the joy of preparing for a camera up the Khyber you’re not missing out. The day before requires you to drink a vile-tasting solution that can strip grease off a truck’s axle … and may also contain food poisoning.

You may as well jam a garden hose down your throat and turn it on! It flushes you out like nothing else.

So, in January 2021, I had a colonoscopy that found a 5cm tumour on my colon, seven days later my surgeon confirmed it was bowel cancer.

I named that tumour Bruce after a former neighbour who was a cancerous little b@stard and total pain in the arse.

I next had an MRI on a machine that can pinpoint the blocked area of my colon and take a clear photo… but that was a horrendous experience.

My naivety of what I had to confront was on show when I realised the instructions for the MRI were unclear.

The nurse greeted me with “we need to inject some gel and dye into your rectum!”… Err, excuse me?

I had learnt to park my humility at a doctor’s front door, but having a nurse shove a tube up your arse after fingering gel in your date isn’t an easy experience.

“You need to relax, Daron, so I can inject the rest… there’s a bit of resistance there!”

Ya reckon!?

So, I sucked my thumb and went to my happy place.

This was followed by being put in a large MRI machine that would get a good photo of Bruce.

With ear plugs in and headphones on to listen to some crappy soft music station I was told to lie still.

I was eased out after about 15 minutes to be told that my bowels weren’t sitting still, and I needed to have a jab of muscle relaxant to keep them still for the machine.

Take 2: another 15 or so minutes and my butt was telling me the dye and gel and breakfast wanted out. ASAP.

But once again I was told I needed another jab to relax my innards.

“They just won’t settle.”

Of course not, I was full of dye and gel, and I was clenching tighter than a fish’s arse.

Take 3: I was climbing walls trying to remain still. But I need to sh*t and pee and get the hell out of that coffin.

Finally, a pic was taken and after more than an hour I was released and legged it to the dunny, still in my gown, past the waiting room.

Six days later I was wheeled into surgery for almost seven hours of surgery to remove 15cm of my large intestine.

Fortunately, I did not require a stoma (a bag to poo in direct from my abdomen!) which I had feared, but I had to undergo six sessions of chemotherapy, two months after surgery, when it was confirmed as Stage 3 cancer.

This meant not working for six months, in fact it meant I would feel crap for most of it – physically and mentally.

Making simple decisions to do small things like fold washing became unbearable. I felt utterly useless… So, anxiety became a side effect.

Some days it was background noise other days it was simply mapping out a walk and making sure I knew where the public toilets were… because after bowel surgery and chemo, sometimes, just sometimes, that fart may not be a fart!

Did I need to sht because I was anxious, or was I anxious because I needed to sht? The jury’s still out on that one, but no one wants to be too far from a dunny if you’re touching cloth.

Absurdly, all this was avoidable had I acted as soon symptoms appeared.

Seeing a GP for a checkup and a colonoscopy would have detected the tumour when it was a polyp, had it cut out during the procedure, and then more than likely I would have gone on with my life as normal.

Once considered an old person’s disease, bowel cancer is increasing in younger people and is the second deadliest killer behind lung cancer, and 54 per cent diagnosed are male.

However, 99 per cent of bowel cancer cases can be treated if detected early, but fewer than 50 per cent are detected early because people ignore the symptoms.

I’m fortunate to be able tot o do all the activities I enjoyed before my diagnosis, but others aren’t so lucky.

So, don’t ignore symptoms, get checked early. It can save your life.

My one piece of advice:

If something doesn’t feel right, then it’s not right.

This is not an old person’s disease, it can affect anyone, so get a check up and if you still aren’t satisfied with the GP, get another opinion.