It’s a story that’s been told over and over by young bowel cancer patients.
A collection of relatively minor gut symptoms are mistaken, often by multiple doctors, for benign irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) – a collection of digestive problems that affect about a fifth of adults.
The late Dame Deborah James is one of such patients. Multiple visits to the GP resulted in the conclusion she ‘probably had IBS or, at worst, colitis’.
It wasn’t until almost a year later that a private internal scan revealed a large tumour in her bowel, which went on to spread to her lungs.
Irritable bowel syndrome usually
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