Jo Brown, Cumbria
This story has been archived. Read other real life stories here.
My husband Paul died from stage 4 bowel cancer at the age of 34, this is his story.
It was the day after our wedding day. We should have been continuing celebrations, departing for our honeymoon the following morning, and looking forward to the future with our one-year-old son. Instead, we were in an ambulance with Paul in a lot of pain, unable to keep down painkillers or any fluids. Fast forward a few hours, we were in a room surrounded by a team of medical professionals telling us that they believed Paul had cancer. Unfortunately, from what they could see, it was advanced and terminal. It later transpired that Paul had stage 4 bowel cancer with liver metastasis and peritoneal spread. He was 34 years old and met none of the “criteria” for bowel cancer. The staff were shocked, they had never personally experienced someone so young with bowel cancer. It was recommended to us that we went home, spend as much time as possible with family and “prepare ourselves for the worst”.
How do you process only experiencing 24 hours of normal married life? How do you cope with the contrast from living on the high of your wedding day, to just hours later being told your husband is unlikely to live more than a few weeks? We didn’t have much chance to ponder that. Paul deteriorated rapidly. He had developed an abscess on his primary tumour which had burst causing peritonitis and, untreated, this led to sepsis. He was only a couple of hours away from complete organ failure and, had I not acted to get him emergency treatment as quickly as I did, the irreversible process would have claimed his life there and then. He had a 10-hour lifesaving operation and spent time in ICU (intensive care unit), requiring one to one round the clock care. Just a week on from the wedding, I was now told he was unlikely to be alive at the end of that week. If he did survive the sepsis, it was almost impossible he’d be well enough to endure the intensity of the treatment required to fight his advanced cancer.
Remarkably, he did pull through, recovered incredibly well, and started chemotherapy about six weeks later. He went on to last 18 months before we sadly lost him. During those 18 months, we tried to balance life as a young family, with the ups and downs of life with advanced cancer: multiple chemo cycles, targeted therapy cycles, operations, infections, countless appointments and 14 emergency admissions. However, in between all of that chaos we also ticked off bucket list items, enjoyed family holidays and found joy in the simple things. We chose to live the best life we could, appreciate the present moment and grab every opportunity; held in and held up by the endless love and support of our family, friends and community.
Once we got over the initial trauma period, it became important for me to use our story to raise awareness and to later create Paul’s legacy. I have worked with organisations to support others and am committed to doing more.
I have two main purposes in sharing our story. One is to raise awareness of the symptoms of bowel cancer and to break the patterns of thinking that it is not a young person's disease. It is less common, but it still happens to young people. I do this in the hope of being able to prevent even one family having to go through what we did. If caught early, bowel cancer is an incredibly treatable disease. The main symptoms to look out for are memorable by the letters making up the word BOWEL; blood in your poo, obvious change in bowel habits, weight loss that cannot be explained, extreme fatigue, and a lump or abdominal pain. Should you have any of the symptoms, please get checked and persist if you are still concerned. Even if you have just one of these symptoms as Paul did (initially it was thought he had kidney stones). On the day of diagnosis, his bloods were completely normal; on paper he was a healthy human being. Knowing your own body and what is normal for you, is vital. If you are told you are too young for bowel cancer, keep persisting! It literally could save your life!
The second purpose is to raise awareness around how to support people facing cancer, terminal illness or experiencing grief. Generally, our culture does not cope well with dealing with these topics. Yet, with the advances in medical care, there are more people surviving cancer and living longer with terminal illness. Due to some of the awful things that have happened in recent years, such as the pandemic, there are a lot of people experiencing grief. There is so much more we could do as a society to support people, but I could talk forever about that. For now, if you are facing cancer or terminal illness yourself, supporting a loved one, or are experiencing grief, please know that there are support services and support groups available which try and help as much as possible. I personally found great comfort in talking, especially to others who were going through, or had been through, a similar experience. Some of the people I connected with are now great friends. Reaching out to them certainly helped me both during and after.
Our story, though tragic, is filled with so much love and hope. That may sound strange having shared what I have, but during my experience of trauma and loss, I found that even in the darkest of moments you can still find love, kindness and experience gratitude. If our story helps just one person, I’ll be so glad.
