2. MONTHS OF PAIN . . . AND A FIVE-MINUTE DIAGNOSIS

iN eARLY 2015, not long after getting married, i began having stomach and bowel problems, frequently waking with constipation or painful bloating which saw me trooping ever more often to the doctors.

No one discovered the cause: among the diagnoses were irritable bowel syndrome, severe period pains and food intolerances that saw me cutting everything from wheat to dairy from my diet.

None of it made a difference: by early 2017 i was frequently in such pain i could barely move and my weight plummeted.

We were trying for a family, which complicated things; one GP even thought i had an ectopic pregnancy. By April, 2017, the pains were horrendous, but it wasn’t until November that a GP i hadn’t seen for a while told me that i needed to get to hospital straight away.

At Dundee’s Ninewells hospital, i was referred for a colonoscopy [where a camera is used to examine the lining of the large bowel]. it is normally a 40-minute procedure, but they stopped after five.

My doctor told me they’d found a large tumour and she didn’t need to wait for a biopsy to know that it was cancer.

Hearing that word is just like what you see in films — you feel total, numbing shock.

At the same time, i felt a sense of relief. i had been in so much pain for so long that part of me thought: ‘Ok, now i know what this is, let’s fix it.’