Fareham mum urges others to get checked for bowel cancer as charity reveals diagnosis delays

After months of intense stomach pain and doctors turning her away, Louise Favaretto was diagnosed in September 2017 with bowel cancer, aged just 36.

Louise, from Fareham, visited health professionals three times before she had the scans she needed to eventually diagnose her with the disease and begin her treatment.

The 39-year-old said: ‘It took a while to get some answers and took me to get really ill to get anywhere with it.

‘It was frustrating, I would cycle to school with my daughter and have to keep stopping because of the pain.

‘I never expected it to be that, it would never have come into my mind that it was bowel cancer. I’d never heard of anyone who’d had it.’

Bowel Cancer UK’s new Never Too Young report today highlights the fact that younger people can be diagnosed with bowel cancer, after a survey of 1,073 people who had been diagnosed with the disease showed that half were not aware before diagnosis that they could develop the disease at a younger age.

Around a third had delayed visiting their GP for at least three months, even though they had symptoms of bowel cancer and 43 per cent  were forced to visit their doctor three times or more, with one in six returning on at least five occasions before being referred for bowel cancer tests.

The Never Too Young report urges younger people to familiarise themselves with bowel cancer symptoms, including blood in your stool, a persistent and unexplained change in bowel habit, unexplained weight loss, extreme tiredness for no obvious reason, and a pain or lump in your stomach.

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Louise, who finished treatment in January 2018 before getting the all-clear, said: ‘If you start to gradually see changes in your body, it’s important to get things checked out because the longer you leave it the worse it could be.’

Genevieve Edwards, chief executive at Bowel Cancer UK, said: ‘It’s incredibly concerning that doctors continue to rule out the disease for people who visit with classic red flag symptoms, telling them they’re too young to have bowel cancer.

‘Nobody should be told they don’t have bowel cancer based only on their age, and referrals for further investigation should be made as soon as possible.’

A message from the Editor, Mark Waldron

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