DEBORAH James has been rushed to A&E with a 40C fever amid her advanced bowel cancer battle.
Trending In The News columnist was back in hospital just week after celebrating her milestone 40th birthday – which she never believed she’d reach.
Deborah, a mum-of-two, shared a selfie on Instagram and wrote: “Not how I want to start a Wednesday!
“Had to go to A&E, was spiking 40 degree temperatures and was so dehydrated from not being able to keep anything in me!
“Have spent the last 8 hours being pumped full of antibiotics and fluids – lots of fluids! Feeling better already! Hope this is a fly by visit!”
On Wednesday evening she was still stuck in hospital, missing a launch event at the Science and Industry Museum.
Posting a photo, she wrote: “Gutted I couldn’t be there in person but managed to record a video for the launch from my hospital bed!”
Deborah, known as BowelBabe on Instagram, was diagnosed with stage 4 bowel cancer in 2016, at the age of 35.
She has beaten the odds by living at least five years after her diagnosis, which she never dreamed possible.
Doctors said that, due to an aggressive mutation in her cancer, most people like her “live for about seven months, two-and-a-half years at best”.
But Deborah is gruelling daily chemotherapy in order to keep her cancer at bay.
She has described it as the “hardest three months since my diagnosis physically and mentally”.
Deborah said in her recent Sun column, Things Cancer Made me Say: “I’ve been telling my nearest and dearest for the last month that I think I must be dying.
“That’s how bad my stomach pain and vomiting has been.
“Some days I find it challenging to even leave the house – and my mind automatically assumes it must be my cancer growing again.
“How can it not be?
“But as it turns out, it really is ‘just’ the hideous side effects of cancer treatment.”
Earlier this year, Deborah was told that the experimental drugs keeping her alive had stopped working.
A rapidly growing tumour wrapped around her bile duct, and as a result her liver began to fail.
She was told it was inoperable, but that her liver was too fragile for her to have chemotherapy.
On June 23, Deborah was rushed to hospital for an emergency operation to insert a stent into her liver to try to reverse the organ failure.
Thankfully it worked and she could have chemo again, and she is nearing her 100th cycle in just four-and-a-half years.
In the week she hit her 40th birthday, on October 2, Deborah was told the “nuclear chemo” drugs were working and that her cancer was stable, with no new tumours growing.
She penned: “It doesn’t really change my reality, apart from confirming that I must plough on with hardcore chemo to stay alive.
“It hasn’t suddenly made my horrific side effects disappear, and it won’t stop me feeling completely rank on a daily basis.
“And it definitely doesn’t mean I can ease up on my treatment plan.
“Despite all that, I am happy. Really happy.”
