An often overlooked early warning signal of advanced bowel cancer that appeared one year before my diagnosis…Do not underestimate its importance

A mother-of-two is warning women to seek help for gut issues after what she thought was just stomach pain turned out to be advanced bowel cancer that had spread to her liver.

Tess, 33, who is known as ‘thegreenthumbmum’ on TikTok, originally believed her symptoms were due to a dairy or gluten intolerance, only to later find out the devastating truth.

Doctors also assumed the pain may be a childbirth complication, as it struck 18 months after she’d giving birth to her youngest child.

However, other alarming symptoms began to strike, including constipation, ‘thin’ stools, blood in the toilet and extreme fatigue.

‘I would wake up from an 8-10 hour sleep exhausted,’ she said told her 15,000 followers.

‘I was tired all day and would be in bed early every night. 

‘I even got an iron infusion two months before diagnosis [designed to help with exhaustion] which didn’t help the fatigue at all…little did I know.’

It took 10 months from the onset of her symptoms for Tess to finally undergo a colonoscopy, a procedure that involves inserting a flexible camera into the rectum to examine the bowel.

The scan revealed a tumour so large the procedure had to be abandoned there and then. 

Tess, from Sydney, was eventually diagnosed with stage four bowel cancer — the disease had spread to her liver. 

She shared that watching similar videos of women discussing their bowel cancer symptoms on TikTok motivated her to push medics to perform the colonoscopy.

‘If I had never heard their stories and aligned them with my own…who knows when I would have finally pushed for that colonoscopy the doctors insisted I didn’t need,’ she said.

Fortunately, medics were able to remove all the cancer during a complex operation and doctors have told Tess there is a 50 per cent chance she will stay cancer free. 

Bowel cancer rates among the under 50s are on the rise globally.

Experts say the exact reasons behind the disturbing rise in these cancer cases is still unknown. 

However, some believe poor diets, increased consumption of ultra-processed foods, obesity and a lack of exercise or a combination of these and other factors could be responsible for the alarming trend.

A study at the end of last year found bowel cancer rates in adults aged 25 to 49 rose in 27 out of the 50 countries in the decade to 2017.

The steepest increases  were found in Chile (4 per cent annual rise on average), New Zealand (4 per cent), Puerto Rico (3.8 per cent) and England (3.6 per cent).

Separate data from Cancer Research UK suggests bowel cancer has seen a 52 per cent increase in incidence rates for adults aged 25 to 49 since the early 1990s.

In contrast rates of the disease in older groups, who are statistically more likely to get the disease overall, have either declined or remained stable in the same period. 

There are about 2,600 new bowel cancer cases in people aged 25-49 in the UK every year, with 44,100 new cases among all ages.

Multiple heartbreaking stories of young people in the prime of their lives being diagnosed with bowel cancer have emerged in recent years. 

Perhaps the most recognisable victim of the trend is Deborah James — known as ‘bowel babe’ — who was diagnosed at just 35 and raised millions for charity in her final days in 2022. 

Analysis suggests deaths from bowel cancer overall in the UK are set to rise by 2,500 a year between now and 2040.

Meanwhile, the number of people in the UK diagnosed with the disease will rise by around a tenth in the same period.

Bowel cancer currently kills just shy of 17,000 people in Britain each year, with only half of those diagnosed expected to survive 10 years after their diagnosis.