A man was diagnosed with the same condition his mum had just recovered from after his stomach made "churning noises".
For two months, dad-of-three Keith Dawber, 55, felt "sore" and "uncomfortable" when going to the toilet, before noticing he was passing blood as well. He said: "Some days [my stomach] felt like it was turning over a bit, you know, little churning noises in the stomach. But because we were in lockdown at that time, I didn't go to the doctors initially."
Keith, from St Helens, tried over-the-counter treatments on what he thought might have been "piles or haemorrhoids", but these didn't work. Eventually he sought help from a GP, who sent him for a colonoscopy, which led to a diagnosis of bowel cancer. The telecoms worker said: "I suspected it. I had it in the back of my mind, so I was half prepared for the worst.
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"It still sort of hits you between the eyes when you get that diagnosis, so there was a bit of initial shock, which probably lasted half a day because from the hospital, I had to come home to tell my children that I had this diagnosis. It was difficult, they were upset. We were all upset.
"Then late in that afternoon, I went for a long walk on my own just to clear my head, and then it became a bit of a relief. I'd been going through this thing for a couple of months, not knowing what it was. But now I knew exactly what it was, so it lifted the clouds a bit. We just said, 'Look, we know what we're up against now, so we know where we're going'."
He kept his spirits up by watching Westerns and by eating and playing games with his family, including his daughter, son and their partners, who kept up a steady supply of tea.
Keith underwent a four-hour surgery to remove part of his bowel, followed by four rounds of chemotherapy when the operation revealed the cancer had spread to his lymph nodes. The last of these 'really knocked him flat', but Christmas Eve fell the day of his last chemo tablet, giving him something to look forward to.
He told the ECHO: "I said to my wife that I wanted to have a Christmas dinner and she was insistent that we could wait, we could put it off and we'll have Christmas later. But it was always my next sort of target. I hadn't eaten anything for a week until Christmas Day, and I managed to get a small Christmas dinner down me on Christmas day, and a glass of wine, which was my little triumph."
Keith raised £3,500 for Bowel Cancer UK by shaving his head, along with his son who dyed his hair grey. He shared his story for Bowel Cancer Awareness Month this April to encourage others to watch out for symptoms and to seek medical advice if they have any concerns.
According to Bowel Cancer UK, the symptoms of bowel cancer include bleeding from your bottom and/or blood in your poo, a persistent and unexplained change in bowel habit, unexplained weight loss extreme tiredness for no obvious reason, and a pain or lump in your tummy
Keith said: "People really need to take a closer look at their body and the behaviours of their body. Any changes that you see, get it seen to. I think notoriously men, and probably men of my age, are particularly stubborn or reticent to go to the doctors and talk about this sort of stuff.
"Always please go and check if you see any changes. If you're not comfortable, no matter how trivial you might think it is, it's got to be better to have it checked out because if you don't have it checked out, then the alternative is it might be too late."
