By the time she was 35 years old, Brisbane woman Jodie experienced red flag signs and symptoms of bowel cancer but after eight years, she’d become used to them being attributed to something else.
She was anaemic, constantly fatigued and had rectal bleeding, blood in her stool, and a mucosal discharge after going to the toilet.
However, as a young woman and new mother, doctors advised the blood was due to haemorrhoids and attributed the other symptoms to pregnancy and post-partum changes.
Over several years, Jodie was told she needed to eat more fibre, lose weight, and that her anaemia was the cause of her fatigue.
But with no improvements in her health after taking iron tablets and vitamins and closely following what GPs had advised; Jodie demanded a colonoscopy.
“It took me 12 months to get a referral for a colonoscopy and then another eight months for an examination”
“I ended up on the wait list for so long that nurses and doctors were remarking on how long it had been.”
After years of being misdiagnosed and waiting, Jodie finally received the news: it was not haemorrhoids; it was cancer.
“I had the procedure and found out I had a tumour in my sigmoid colon. There was not one haemorrhoid but there was stage III bowel cancer,” Jodie said.
The cancer-specific five-year survival rate for early onset bowel cancer is 94 per cent when detected at stages I and II but drops to 77 per cent by stage III and just 21 per cent at stage IV.1
“Looking back, I had been experiencing signs and symptoms of bowel cancer since 2009, but I wasn’t diagnosed until 2017 – the delay made things far worse than they should have been.”
Today, Jodie encourages Australians to trust their instincts and seek answers if symptoms persist. Her experience highlights the importance of ensuring those with red flag signs and symptoms of bowel cancer are diagnosed as soon as possible.
