‘I feel incredibly lucky that I got the all clear’
Heidi Evans, 48, lives with her husband Taff, 52, a soldier, in Nottingham. They have two children, Sian, 25, and Jack,
17. She says, “In January 2020, I started noticing spots of blood on the loo paper after wiping. It happened two or three times a week, but I wasn’t concerned.
“Then, at the end of June, I was in the shower when blood gushed from my bottom. I was fast-tracked to having a colonoscopy and I could see a large shadow on the screen. They told me to contact Taff, who hadn’t been allowed on to the ward with me because of COVID restrictions, before they spoke to me in a side room. It was then that I began to panic. And as they told me I had bowel cancer, I felt the room close in on me. My mum had died from bowel cancer when she was 71, by the time it was diagnosed she was stage four and died the following week. I was terrified the same was going to happen to me.
“The nurse was reassuring and said they’d got it early. And further tests revealed it hadn’t spread, but because it was 6cm I was classed as stage three. In September, I started chemotherapy and radiotherapy simultaneously. I didn’t lose my hair and felt absolutely fine throughout, luckily. Then, in December, they operated to remove the tumour, which had halved in size through treatment.
“I need a stoma bag now because some of my bowel was taken away, but it doesn’t bother me at all – I call it my ‘bag of life’ as without it I wouldn’t be here.
“In February I was given the all clear. I feel incredibly lucky that I got checked when I did – and that’s why I’m so determined to talk about it to everyone. I don’t want people to feel embarrassed or to dismiss it as ‘nothing.’ If you are worried it’s important to get checked – don’t put it off.”