In the beginning

Not the beginning of me, that's no different to the rest of the human race and if you don't know about the birds and the bees rights now then I'm not about to teach you.  I mean the beginning of finding out about the cancer.  I can't mean the beginning of the cancer because I don't know that yet and may never know. That's going to be a whole different quest, if you like.

It's unavoidable that there is going to be a lot of discussion of poo in this blog. Firstly I have a toddler who isn't potty trained, so there is a general need to address poo as a matter of family concern on a daily basis. Secondly, in my case, this is a bowel disease and bowels make poo.  And poo was where it started. Blood in my poo.

Sometime after DS was born, I started to find blood on the loo paper when I'd wiped after a poo. I assumed, as you would do, that one of the many permanent changes my son had wrought on me physically whilst I was pregnant with him was a good case of piles and this was nothing more than that. But it started to happen more and more frequently. I was vaguely aware - the bowel cancer awareness in the UK isn't great - that blood in your poo persistently for a period isn't a good thing, so I went to see my GP. Who was about as sympathetic as a Vogon. I don't remember which GP it was - to me, a doctor dodger in most circumstances, the timing of the appointment tends to be more important than who I see so it doesn't interfere with a working day. So it could have been a locum. Anyway, all he did was look at my bottom, have a quick feel internally and then said nothing. Not even, "If it doesn't improve, come back."  My overall impression was that I had wasted his time. So I assumed it was nothing and carried on.

2011 turned into 2012. January turned into June. Thanks to 6 months in India before university and a proper student lifestyle of questionable food hygiene, there isn't much that upsets my stomach, so a week long bout of diahorrea preceded by sharp stomach pains was definitely out of the norm. And so was the blood. Blood in normal poo was par for the course by this point - you could see it streaking the outside - but this was new. So back to the GP it was.