Bowel cancer at 36: Aussie mother shares warning as cases rise in younger adults
Before going to the doctor, Hayley Warren Googled her symptoms.
Abdominal pain, bloating, and pain when going to the toilet resulted in various possibilities. Bowel cancer was among them, and Hayley had two of the symptoms.
“The GP thought it might be ovary-related and sent me for an ultrasound,” Hayley from Perth tells New Idea.
“I asked her if she thought I could have bowel cancer and she said no.”
Hayley felt reassured, and when the ultrasound came back clear in August 2022, she went back to her busy life, caring for her girls, Isabel, then two, and Audrey, six months.
“The symptoms came and went, but I had two young kids, and I prioritised them,” Hayley says.
“I had some bleeding in May 2023, and a different GP referred me for a colonoscopy then. She thought it was probably haemorrhoids, as lots of women present with them after having babies.”
It meant Hayley wasn’t worried when the long wait meant she didn’t get the colonoscopy until October 2023.
“When I woke up from the colonoscopy, everyone was so lovely. It wasn’t until later that I realised they would’ve known what was found and felt sorry for me,” Hayley says.
She and her husband, Kael, 40, were taken into a room, and a doctor said he’d found a 5cm tumour.
“I asked if that was big, and he said he’d seen bigger, which I think was meant to be reassuring,” Hayley recalls.
Following tests, Hayley was diagnosed with stage 3 rectal cancer, which meant it was in her lymph nodes.
Just one stage away from being terminal, it needed to be hit hard, and there was no time for the fertility treatment Hayley would need for her longed-for third child.
“I was 36, and it was a whole year after I’d first told a GP about my symptoms,” Hayley says. “If it had been caught a year earlier, it might have only been stage two. There might have been time to consider fertility.
“It was presented as a choice between giving the kids a sibling and them keeping their mum. There was no decision, and I started chemotherapy.”
Next, Hayley needed a course of radiotherapy and then surgery in June 2024 to remove the tumour.
“After that, I was found to have no evidence of disease,” she explains. “My surgeon was confident I had a low chance of recurrence. My bowel function will never be the same, but I can get used to that, and I’ll be monitored for five years.”
If the GP had ordered a colonoscopy, things could’ve been so different.
“You have to trust your instincts,” Hayley says. “If you think something is bad enough to go to the doctor, push for answers and trust yourself to keep following it up until you get some.”
Grateful to be alive, she’s determined to help others. There’s a common misconception that bowel cancer is an ‘old person’s disease’. It’s actually Australia’s deadliest cancer for people aged 25-54, and 1884 people under 50 are diagnosed every year.
Caught early enough, 99 per cent of cases can be successfully treated.
Now a spokesperson for Bowel Cancer Australia, Hayley is sharing her story for Bowel Cancer Awareness Month and says she constantly encourages people to trust their instincts and get checked.
“I talk to everyone now about getting a colonoscopy,” Hayley, now 39, says. “A colonoscopy takes 15 minutes. It’s not a significant procedure, and it could be life-saving.”
