I’m Kathy and I come from Lisburn in Northern Ireland and for anybody who doesn’t know Northern Ireland, that’s just about 10 miles outside of Belfast, which I’m sure you’ve heard of.

So I was diagnosed with stage 3 bowel cancer at the end of 2019 and I was completely blindsided.

I was super healthy, super fit, so I thought, and probably in the best shape of my life at 48 years old. I played tennis as much as I possibly could. I ran four or five days a week.

I was in the gym most days, so I was completely blindsided when I found out that I had bowel cancer and it was totally unexpected.

Every one of my friends said to me, how did you get bowel cancer? Because I was so fit and so healthy or so I thought. So, it can happen to anybody, which is why I’m very, very passionate about helping other people through their bowel cancer experience and encouraging people to go early and get diagnosed.

I had my operation in April moving into May 2020 and I started chemo in July.

Just had to wait until all of my wounds had healed properly before I started. And at that point I was still getting used to a stoma.

So, it usually takes about six months, at least, for a stoma to get into a regular routine. So, mine was still all over the place and I think for a lot a lot of bowel cancer patients chemo comes very quickly off the back of having the operation, so you’re not used to having the stoma yet.

You’re still trying to get to grips with leaks and just really what you can eat and what you can’t eat. I suppose just the just the routine and I guess just the trauma really of having it.

So, when chemotherapy then starts with all of the side effects that chemotherapy can bring, it just throws you into a whole different world of having to manage the stoma very differently again.

When you’re going through chemotherapy treatment, every day can be very different, and every day is very different, and there will be days when you feel really rubbish and there’ll be days when you just don’t feel like getting out of bed and that’s fine. Stay in bed. You know, stay in bed, watch TV, sleep, do whatever. But then the next day might be a really good day and you’ll feel like you do have energy and you feel a bit more back to yourself and you’ll be able to go out and do walks and do some gentle exercise and start to build yourself back up again, so you know things change, things pass and just try to keep as positive.

Hopefully take some inspiration from people like myself and other people who have come through that journey. And I’ve been from one extreme in the darkest places to now and seeing life in a completely different way and having my eyes opened. Just being grateful for every single day that I have now.