Young bowel cancer battler wants NZ to
his 32-year-old wife Sarah to bowel cancer in May 2015, and by Tauranga woman Tania Hilliam, 45, who has now been “cancer-free” for more than two years after being diagnosed with stage 4 bowel cancer in 2019.
Ferguson found something was wrong only after seeing her doctor about her hereditary blood condition. Blood tests showed she was “severely anaemic” and she remembered seeing a few bits of blood in her stool.
“I’d only noticed it a handful of times . . . and because of that, I was then referred for a procedure.”
Ferguson was alone at Tauranga Hospital when she was diagnosed, as she thought she just had haemorrhoids. Instead, “I was pretty much told with a camera up my bum that
I had cancer.
“You sort of think, am I going to die?” After her diagnosis, she had surgery and six months of chemo.
She now wants to raise awareness about the symptoms of bowel cancer, particularly among young people, and to remove the stigma that bowel cancer was “an old person’s disease”.
“There is not enough awareness around for young people or for any person in general — there needs to be more.
“We’re seeing a complete change of direction where it’s actually younger people [getting diagnosed with bowel cancer]. It’s on the rise for them and it’s quite scary.”
Before her diagnosis, she knew nothing about bowel cancer and it did not run in the family.
She said the “key” symptom to look for was bleeding from the bottom or blood in the stool. Other symptoms included having a sore stomach, feeling bloated, a change in bowel habits and unexplained weight loss and tiredness, she said.
Ferguson started an online petition about lowering the screening age to
35 to give others the chance of an early diagnosis. “If we can lower the bowel screening age, that in itself will raise awareness for younger people to look at it and go, okay this can affect me and I do need to get checked.”
Hilliam was diagnosed with stage 4 bowel cancer in 2019 when she was 42. While she has been “cancer-free” for more than two1⁄2 years, she is “not out of the woods” yet. Hilliam believes the screening age should be lowered to 35 or 36 as people in their 40s were being diagnosed when it was already “advanced”.
The age should be lowered because people were not recognising they had symptoms, such as an upset stomach or bowel habits changing, and would “write it off” as something else. “It’s going to be less taxing on the health system in the long run, and we’ve got heaps of young Kiwis going through this and it’s really hard on their families.
“Alarm bells . . . need ringing.” Morrison lost his wife Sarah to