Vanessa was just 28 years old and living her dream life on the Gold Coast when she began to experience the symptoms: severe upper abdominal pain, brain fog, vomiting, and rectal bleeding.
Despite experiencing red flag signs and symptoms of bowel cancer, due to her age they were not immediately linked to a possible malignancy.
During this time, a tumour was growing inside her rectum that would reach seven centimetres in diameter.
Rates of bowel cancer are higher than ever before when it comes to Vanessa’s generation, but young people often find themselves self-advocating for a diagnosis.
Bowel cancer rates are 2 to 3-times higher among Australians born in the 1990s than those born in the 1950s. Bowel cancer is now the deadliest cancer for Australians aged 25 to 54, highlighting the need for vigilance across younger age groups.
“I had a referral from my GP for a colonoscopy but with COVID-19 and because of my young age, they put me down as low priority – so I had a two-year wait,”
“They told to come back to the hospital only if things got worse.”
And get worse they did.
Vanessa would present to the ER on six occasions having spent hours vomiting, while bleeding from her rectum. Each time, her symptoms were dismissed.
“On the seventh occasion, a doctor finally took me seriously and re-categorised me,” she said.
“I was booked for a combined endoscopy and colonoscopy within 30 days. They kept me back after everybody else they’d seen that day was sent on their way.
“I received the news I had Stage III cancer, and a large tumour was blocking my rectum.”
Vanessa said everything she had seen before then, including the marketing materials related to Government’s national bowel cancer screening program, all suggested bowel cancer was an old person’s disease.
It’s an assumption she knows from experience that can delay diagnosis for many younger patients.
“We’ve been told our whole lives bowel cancer is an old person’s disease but it’s not. You are never too young. Cancer doesn’t discriminate,” Vanessa said.
