World Cancer Day: My Story

My cancer story starts nearly four years ago, in late January 2022. After a few days of having constipation, I ended up with severe stomach pain and vomiting, which came on very quickly. I was rushed to the hospital, where I was stabilised with IV fluids and morphine.  Blood tests and a CT scan showed a large bowel obstruction that was causing my large bowel to die, and it was going septic. I will never forget the poor nurse who had to advised me that the bowel obstruction was most probably cancerous.

I didn’t get upset or start crying (which is rare for me. Empath things.). I think I was more stunned or shocked, or maybe the morphine had numbed my feelings as well.

I was taken to a ward to be stabilised some more, before I had emergency surgery to remove most of my large bowl. Surgery was successful and I spent the next two weeks in hospital recovering.

I have lost count of how many times I have been told I am lucky to be here and that I was incredibly close to dying.

It’s funny, in a weird way, most bowel cancer patients have some sort of warning signs before they are diagnosed. However, everything was relatively normal going for me until the hospital visit.

My surgeon and oncologist said they had successfully removed all the cancer, and it hadn’t spread anywhere else. There wasn’t any occurrence in my lymph nodes, in which they took, I think it was 20.

My oncologist recommended preventative strong chemo, which I didn’t see the point of.

Why would you go through the horrible effects of chemo if you didn’t really need to? I had seen my Mum and two friends go through years of being alive but not living on round after round of chemo and I certainly wasn’t going to have it if it wasn’t required. They did reassure me that that they had removed it all, after all.

Which brings me to August 2022, where a CT scan showed tiny nodules on my lungs. As they were too small (1-2mm), they couldn’t really be categorised as anything nasty. By this stage, I was becoming really unhappy with the oncologist I was seeing, so I got a referral from my GP to go to the Andrew Love Cancer Centre in Geelong.

I have been going there now for three years, and the doctors, nurses and support staff are amazing.

When I started at ALCC, I was put on an IV targeted therapy drug, Bevacizumab every three weeks and Capecitabine for fourteen days with a week’s break in between. The treatment was working well and had stabilised the lung nodules.

Well, until 2025. The nodules had progressive growth at my three-monthly CT scans. By December, my oncologist and I discussed what the next step was, and she asked if I would be happy if she consulted other specialists from the centre to see what they thought (a round table). On the 19th of December, my oncologist rang me to say that the head surgeon was happy to remove the nodules. However, they will start with the large nodule (2cm) on my left lung. If I was happy to go ahead, she would make an appointment for me to see the surgeon. Funnily enough, two of the smaller nodules have disappeared in the recent scan, which is amazing.

Last month, I did indeed meet with the surgeon and last Friday had a pre-operation clinic with a physio, anaesthesiologist, another surgeon and had an ECG and Xray. Now, I wait to be booked in for the surgery, which should be either Wednesday next week or the week after.

So that is my story so far. Hopefully, by the end of 2026, I won’t have any nodules.