One in two of us will get cancer one day. It's a daunting statistic not intended to scaremonger, but intended to remind us how important it is to stay in tune with our bodies.
Granted, the majority cancers strike older people. But that's not to say they discriminate against the young - and Deborah James knows this better than most.
At 35, Deborah's life was going swimmingly. She was married with two children, and had a job she loved as the deputy head of school. But she also had blood in her poo, and what she didn't realise for quite some time was that the change in her toilet habits was actually an indication of bowel cancer.
Since being diagnosed with stage 4 bowel cancer two years ago, Deborah has become a campaigner, raising awareness about the symptoms of bowel cancer via social media (where she posts as 'Bowel Babe'). She co-hosts the BBC podcast You, Me and the Big C (along with Rachael Bland, who tragically passed away from breast cancer in September last year, and Lauren Mahon, who was also diagnosed with cancer at a young age), and she's written a book about her experiences of living with a life-threatening disease, called F*** You Cancer.
But this week, Deborah decided to take a slightly different approach to her cancer awareness raising. Off the back of the #10YearChallenge posts you'll have seen flooding your Instagram feeds, Deborah felt compelled to revisit her own photos - and she ended up sharing a series from the lead up to her cancer diagnosis.
Posting on Instagram stories, the mum-of-two uploaded pictures of herself in the minutes, days, weeks and months before discovering she had bowel cancer to make an important point. "I would have had the Stage 4 Bowel Cancer - including the 6.5cm tumour - inside me in all of these [photos]," Deborah wrote.
And the most glaringly obvious thing? You wouldn't be able to tell. Deborah looks completely normal in every single one. She doesn't 'look' like she has cancer. And it proves just how easy the disease can be to miss.
"In all the pictures I looked healthy but I was pooing blood, was tired and had a change in bowel habits," Deborah wrote on an Instagram Stories post.
"When I look back at old pictures, I wish I had known the symptoms," she added.
Acknowledging that she won't beat herself up for not knowing more about bowel cancer symptoms at the time - fixating on that won't change things for her - Deborah pointed that highlighting the signs might change things for other people in a similar situation.
Her posts serve as a vital reminder to be aware of changes to your body, and to act on them if you are concerned. Push for a thorough investigation if you think things might not be quite right, because one day it might just save your life.
Symptoms of bowel cancer to look out for, according to Bowel Cancer UK:
- Bleeding from your bottom and/or blood in your poo
- A persistent and unexplained change in bowel habit
- Unexplained weight loss
- Extreme tiredness for no obvious reason
- A pain or lump in your tummy
Remember: the majority of people who suffer these symptoms don’t have bowel cancer, but it's absolutely worth getting checked out anyway.
Follow Cat on Instagram.
Cat is Cosmopolitan UK's features editor covering women's issues, health and current affairs. news, features and health. The route to her heart is a simple combination of pasta and cheese (somewhat ironic considering the whole health writing thing), and she finds it difficult to commit to TV series so currently has about 14 different ones on the go.
