Rob Parnham, Birmingham

Rob was diagnosed with stage 3 bowel cancer in March 2024, aged 40. Now he’s working to raise awareness of the disease within the construction industry.

I’m married with three lovely children and I’ve worked in the construction industry for twenty years. I have a passion for sports and keeping fit, and love spending time with my family.

My diagnosis

At first, I didn’t think my symptoms were anything out of the ordinary. I was feeling extremely tired, but I just thought this was down to a busy life. I would go to the gym in the morning, work in construction during the day and on top of that had a busy family life. I went to my GP complaining about this tiredness and they found I was anaemic. Because of this, I was then given a FIT test which came back positive for blood in my poo.

I was sent for a colonoscopy which found an 8cm tumour in the right side of my bowel. On the 26 March 2024, I was diagnosed with bowel cancer. It was a massive shock because I thought it would be something like Crohn’s disease or ulcerative colitis because of the blood in my poo. When they told me, I couldn’t stop crying. My first thoughts were that I was going to leave my three young children without a father, and I couldn’t accept that it was happening to me, I kept asking, “why me?”.

Treatment

I saw a specialist surgeon and the Colorectal team at my local hospital to discuss my treatment. They explained that the tumour was contained in my bowel and hadn’t spread, so I was very lucky as my diagnosis was at an early stage.

On the 25 April, my surgeon performed a right hemicolectomy and removed nearly 40cm of my bowel, along with my appendix and the surrounding lymph nodes.

After surgery I stayed in hospital for seven days because I had an ileus (a lack of movement in the intestines which can be a side effect of surgery) and I had to wait for a few days for my bowels to start working again.

The support from my medical team was absolutely amazing, especially from the Colorectal team, who were fantastic throughout and made me want to get better. My surgeon was also so kind and helpful and explained in full what the next steps were while in hospital.

As I was recovering, I read a lot of the Real Life Stories on Bowel Cancer UK’s website. They really encouraged me to stay focused on getting better and this made me mentally stronger. I concentrated on taking small steps and gradually working towards getting my fitness back.

I had my follow up meeting with my colorectal nurses and surgeon and received the news that the tumour was stage 3, but as the cancer hadn’t spread beyond the bowel no further treatment was needed. This was such a relief, and I was overwhelmed with joy. For the next five years, I’ll have yearly CT scans and colonoscopies to make sure the cancer hasn’t returned.

Recovery

As I recovered from surgery, it was frustrating to not be able to train at the gym or work. Mentally, I coped because of the support from family, friends and my fantastic work colleagues. I’m very grateful that my employer was so kind and understanding whilst I was going through such a traumatic time. Their support made my recovery a lot quicker and within three weeks I was back at work, to everyone’s amazement.

Now that a few months have passed and I’ve healed, I’m currently enjoying being busy again at work. Sometimes my anxiety kicks in and I worry that the cancer will come back. I know I’ll always have that feeling but life has to go on.

Raising awareness

The big message from me is making sure that everyone understands the symptoms so they can get diagnosed at an early stage. Working in the construction industry, I know a lot of my colleagues may not want to talk about these things. I want to work within the industry to make more people aware of the symptoms and encourage them to not be embarrassed about speaking to their GP. We only have one chance in life, and we need to grab that chance and live it to the full, thankfully I still have this opportunity.

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