WHEN dad-of-two Matthew Wiltshire noticed ‘concerning poos’ he put it down to too much red wine and steak.
But airing on the side of caution, the then 48-year-old decided to visit his GP.
That was in April 2015 and since then, the charity founder has had over 50 round of chemotherapy, plus radiotherapy to keep bowel cancer at bay.
Speaking to Trending In The News, Matthew, now 55, who lives with his wife Sophie, 51, in Weybridge, Surrey, is urging Brits to not put off embarrassing conversations about bodily functions.
Bowel cancer screening in the UK is offered to people in their 50s.
Sun writer Deborah James, who is currently receiving palliative care for stage 4 bowel cancer, helped to lower the screening age – which had previously been for people 60 and over.
Read more on bowel cancer
Early diagnosis saves lives – but because of the age limit on checks – many people think they are too young for bowel cancer, which is exactly what Matthew experienced when he visited his GP.
“The doctor said not to worry, at 48, I was too young for bowel cancer – I figured I’d just been eating too much steak and drinking too much red wine,” he remembers.
He was referred for a colonoscopy “just to be safe” and a cancerous tumour was found in his colon.
“My whole world turned upside down. I worried about what treatment I’d need and faced the overwhelming fear that I wouldn’t be around to look after my family as long as I’d planned,” says Matthew.
He began a “rollercoaster” of treatment that proved successful.
Within three weeks he had surgery to have the tumour removed and says the time he spent in hospital ‘was without doubt the worst I’d endured my life’.
“I was fed through a drip in my neck for a week and had to live with a stoma for three months.
“But ultimately, the operation was successful. I was sent home to carry on with my life without radiotherapy or chemotherapy.
“The ileostomy was reversed in August 2015 and I was told the cancer was a low stage and they’d caught it early on. In August 2016, I celebrated my one-year all clear of cancer.”
But in November 2017, Matthew started to experience pain in his bottom area and scans revealed the cancer had returned this time in the pelvic region.
“My oncologist put me on five weeks of daily radiotherapy with tablet form chemotherapy and weekly intravenous chemotherapy.
“I was due to have surgery in 2017 but before carrying out the procedure the surgeon did a scan which showed some suspicious nodules in my lungs.
I had to wait eight weeks to see if they grew. They did. I was told I had stage four metastatic colorectal cancer.
“He said there was no point doing the operation, it was hopeless. I was too far gone.”
Then in 2018, Matthew decided to do whatever he could to look after himself.
