Cancer side-effect nobody talks about – massive issue patients must be prepared for | UK | News
When I picked up the phone, there was tension and an overwhelming sense of guilt. I was about to make a phone call that I never wanted to make and never expected to have to make. When my mom answered the phone, I told her I couldn’t meet her and my dad at 7pm as planned. It was four hours away but I knew my stomach wasn’t feeling well enough to make the journey from my home in South London to our meeting point in North London.
And even if I managed to get to a theater in Hampstead, I had no confidence that I would be able to sit and watch the play without needing to use the toilet multiple times. Frankly, after leaving the auditorium for the first time, I will not be allowed back in, and I believe that’s fair enough. So I had to make the administrative choice to spend the evening next to the toilet at home rather than on the floor of a theater miles away from my city.
That day I woke up around 4am with stomach pains before diarrhea and was relieved to be able to go to bed again at 7am. The fun didn’t end when I woke up again around noon.
But that didn’t mean I didn’t feel guilty when I called my parents and told them I couldn’t go to see the play we had arranged months ago.
I have disappointed so many people since I was diagnosed with incurable bowel cancer in the summer of 2023.
I quickly canceled nights out because I felt too sick or because I didn’t trust my stomach and intestines not to play tricks on me. I left bars early due to diarrhea and stopped attending comedy nights due to exhaustion.
But this was the first time that the side effects of chemotherapy led to me having to cancel something with my family.
And it felt like when my parents read my school report when I was eight years old. Back then, I got an A for achievement and a B for effort; My sister got an A in both categories.
I thought that if it resulted in an A for achievement, a B for effort was good enough, but I could see that my parents didn’t see it that way, and I felt like I would let them down.
Thirty-eight years later, some might say that it wasn’t my fault that I had to cancel a night out due to the side effects of chemotherapy, because I couldn’t choose when and where the diarrhea appeared.
But the counter-argument is that if I had reported many of my symptoms earlier (even those thought by health officials to be linked to my meningitis and other health conditions in spring 2023), then I wouldn’t have had stage four cancer, so I wouldn’t have had to undergo such a grueling chemotherapy regimen.
Feelings of guilt like this are a huge side effect for many cancer patients, but their medical teams rarely acknowledge it. Instead, they try to treat the physical symptoms they are trained to do.
Their expertise is about what cells do rather than what brain cells think; but they still need to understand that they can help their patients with their mental health. They can do this by seeing how their patients are doing and referring them elsewhere for support when necessary; This could be a support group, a befriending service or a psychologist with specialist cancer training.
This isn’t something only they can do. It’s something they should do. That’s why I’m leading the Daily Express’ Cancer Care campaign: to ensure all cancer patients have access to mental health support both during and after treatment.
