In November last year, John Paul Ricken lost his young wife Susan to an aggressive form of bowel cancer aged 35 - just four weeks after her diagnosis.
The father-of-two is now on a mission to lower the age of bowel cancer screening in Ireland and spread the message that it isn't just “an old person's disease”.
Cork couple John Paul and Susan emigrated to Australia in 2011 where they settled in Perth. They welcomed two kids, a son named Leo in June 2019 and Lucy in 2021, who was just eight months old when Susan died.
In the weeks after his wife’s death, John Paul set up the Susan Ricken Foundation in her memory to spread awareness about the rising occurrence of bowel cancer in young people.
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He said since setting up the campaign, he has been contacted by young people from all around the world, sharing their own stories of early-onset bowel cancer.
John Paul told the Irish Mirror: “The ideology in Ireland is that bowel cancer is an old person’s disease - that’s not the case. I’m trying to change that consensus because it’s not true. People need to be aware that bowel cancer is affecting people in their thirties, like Susan.”
He added: “The majority of people that contact me are in their thirties or forties or fifties and it’s so much younger than [the screening age].”
While bowel cancer is most commonly diagnosed in older age groups, it is one of the fastest rising cancers in young people. New research shows that people born in the 1990s are two times more likely to develop colon cancer than people born in the 1950s.
In Ireland, bowel cancer screening is available to people aged 60 to 69 years old - with plans to expand the programme to 55 to 74 year olds - and early detection is key to survival rates for the deadly disease.
It is the second most common cancer in men and the third most common cancer in women, according to statistics from the HSE and around 2,800 people are diagnosed with bowel cancer each year.
John Paul’s aim of his campaign is to lower the age of the bowel screening programme in Ireland to at least aged 50, or below, as he says aged 60 is “far too late”. He also wants to raise awareness of the risk of bowel cancer for young people, who often have their symptoms dismissed by GPs as they are considered too young to have bowel cancer.
“If you have any symptoms, go to your doctor, be persistent and get checked out - it could save your life,” he said.
“A lot of people are going to their GPs with symptoms of bowel cancer: blood in the stool would be the main one, weight loss, fatigue, tiredness, bowel movement change like diarrhoea, you could have lumps or abdominal pain. One of the symptoms that Susan had is a low iron count.
“A lot of [younger] people say they go in and they get dismissed when they bring up the symptoms. They are dismissed for constipation, appendicitis - like Susan, haemorrhoids, and the consensus is that a lot of people are told they are too young for it to be bowel cancer.
“People need to take it seriously and if they’ve got symptoms and they’re worried the least they deserve is for the worst case scenario to be ruled out.”
In Susan’s case, sadly her cancer was diagnosed too late. Up until October last year she was seemingly healthy, with no previous health issues, until one day she collapsed at home with severe abdominal pain.
Doctors first believed it was appendicitis but days later she was rushed into emergency surgery to remove a tumour from her bowel. The young family then received the shocking news that Susan had bowel cancer and that she was going to die.
While the couple were left facing a terminal cancer diagnosis with two small kids and almost 10,000 miles from home, they were hopeful that with chemotherapy treatment Susan would be able to live for a long time.
Ultimately Susan was too sick to undergo chemotherapy, as the cancer had already spread to other parts of her body including her stomach and ovaries.
She passed away on November 19, 2021, at the age of 35, just four weeks after being diagnosed.
John Paul has since returned to live in Ireland to raise their two young children, now aged three and a half and 19 months, with the support of family and friends in Cork, which was Susan’s request before she died.
He said he keeps a picture of Susan in each of the children's rooms which helps to keep her memory alive.
“I get Leo to kiss the photo goodnight every night and he remembers her and everything,” said John Paul. “What I told him was that she went up to the moon and the stars and he took in that concept so I just ran with that.
“The older they get now the more questions will come but I show them photos. Lucy was a bit too young but she starts to say ‘Mama’ now when she sees the photo now.
“I always ask Leo ‘What’s Mammy’s name’ and he says ‘Susan’ - just so he doesn’t forget.”
For John Paul, life without Susan as a young widower and father of two has been a huge adjustment but he said the campaign has helped keep him going.
“It’s hard to believe it’s been a year already,” he said. “[Her anniversary] is on the 19th of November but everyday feels like an anniversary to me, you know?
“I try not to focus too much on it but I’ll probably maybe spend time with the kids and do something with them, and try and stay as happy as I can on the day.”
He continued: “I didn’t just lose my wife, I lost my life in Australia, I lost my dreams. I was there for 10 years and all of a sudden then you’re moving back to Cork.
“It’s taken quite a while to accept in my head that I was back living in Cork and I wasn’t living in Australia but getting back into the campaign has been a good healer for me. It gives me a bit of motivation and a bit of a purpose again.”
Last year, John Paul told this newspaper the words of strength from his late wife that gave him the strength to drive the campaign forward.
He said: “Susan said to me before she died, she caught my hand and she whispered to me: ‘I love you so much, you’re stronger than you know, you’ve got this’.
“They’re the words I will carry with me for the rest of my life. Her strength gave me strength. Her positivity gives me positivity.”
John Paul said that before she died Susan encouraged him to start the campaign and he believes she would have done so herself if she had more time.
“I always remember I did the first radio interview with a Cork radio station, she was still alive at the time but she was in the hospital bed but she encouraged me to do it,” he said.
“I always made a comparison then reading about Vicky Phelan this week, and Deborah James in the UK. Those women campaigned for years and years and I reckon Susan would have been pretty similar if she had more time.
“Because she originally believed she was going to beat it and everything was going to be fine."
He is continuing the Susan Ricken Foundation in her memory, which he hopes will save lives and spare other families the heartache and pain of losing a loved one to bowel cancer.
“It’s for Susan,” he said. “And it’s for every single person that’s going through bowel cancer as well. If we can save one life, it will make everything worthwhile.”
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