Bowel Cancer Awareness Month 2018

April is Bowel Cancer Awareness Month (BCAM), a fantastic annual opportunity to raise awareness of bowel cancer and funds to support Bowel Cancer UK’s work.

This year, Beating Bowel Cancer and Bowel Cancer UK have merged to form the UK’s leading bowel cancer charity, with a mission to ensure that by 2050, no-one will die of bowel cancer.

Bowel cancer is the UK’s second biggest cancer killer; however, it shouldn’t be because it is treatable and curable especially if diagnosed early. Nearly everyone diagnosed at the earliest stage will survive bowel cancer, but this drops significantly as the disease develops.

Someone dies from bowel cancer in the UK every thirty minutes.  Seems unthinkable doesn’t it, especially when bowel cancer is treatable when diagnosed at an early stage.  The only problem is that only 9% of patients are diagnosed at the early stage.

Some of the common symptoms of bowel cancer include:

• Bleeding from the bottom and blood in poo
• Persistent and unexplained change in bowel habit
• Sudden and unexplained weight loss
• Being easily fatigued with no obvious reason or cause
• Pain or a lump in the tummy