Ben and Bert's Cancer Adventure01 — The Symptoms

My name is Ben, I am 38 (as of early 2026 when I am writing this) and I am a Gemini, a lover of books, an AI consultant and someone who survived Stage 4 bowel cancer by the skin of one’s teeth. In October 2025 I gave a 30 minute Q&A at a Bowel Cancer UK event for Nurse Consultants, led by one of the amazing Nurse Consultants at Homerton Hospital who, with no hint of superlative, single-handedly pushed me on the path to a genuinely miraculous cure.

There were 10 initial questions in that Q&A and in the hope that this can be helpful for others, I will write up a long form response to each of them. As warning, I am not a concise writer, nor do I pretend to have a flair for writing. However I hope that this will not be an utter chore to read and indeed that it might kick someone to get to their doctor, soothe the worries of a friend or give some hope against hope if you’re in the thick of it.

Let us start at the beginning - the symptoms.

I was always a bit fat - my long-term partner at the time had sought a “Dad bod” in her OKCupid profile - and mine was sponsored by Greggs and Dominos Pizza. Yet I have always been healthy. I caught a nasty case of Covid, had a few knocks and bangs from playing rugby as a kid, and have had some clumsy moments to which a few scars can attest. But I had never had an X-ray as an adult. And a CT scan? With contrast? I knew of them only by teenage watchings of House. When one has been so healthy, and then starts to slowly, almost imperceptibly decline, quite possibly terminal cancer does not come first to mind.

I write all this so that you perhaps have some understanding for why, and how, someone could ignore a climbing calamitous chorus of severe side effects. How could someone be so stupid as to let it get so bad?

Easily, I unashamedly say, scarily so. Especially when the worst symptoms occur alongside the final death rattles of a fast fading 7-year relationship, and the tumultuous final moments of a 5-year old business that once numbered 15 staff. Cancer does not happen in a bubble - life continues around it - the cancer depriving you of the energy and effort to face the challenges of life, the stresses of life straining an already breaking body beyond its limits. Looking back, it all seems so utterly clear. At the time, it felt so shrouded by mists.

Preface completed, onwards we go - immediately, and quite literally, into the shit.

The Bowels, They Are A-Changing

There was a time when my bowels worked like clockwork. Assuming no nasty bug, or far-off travels, everything just sort of worked. Until the days they didn’t.

I remember the week it all changed distinctly - it was the Easter week of 2022 and my then partner was away for a week. On Monday 11th April 2022, my bowels were fine. I had a heavy night out on the Wednesday or Thursday that week and the bowels were unhappy the next day. And they were rarely ever happy again.

Immediately my bowels ran through all the Red Flags:

• Liquid evacuations, rapidly after having a meal
• Constipation so severe I sometimes had to [EDITED OUT FOR THOSE EATING]
• Here’s a crimson red flag of a symptom - regular feeling of needing to go but being unable to do so/nothing to go with
• Stomach cramps - occasionally severe but at this stage mostly faint but present for hours - the sort of pain where you rub the area without thinking
• It was my lower right abdomen - spoiler alert - the ground zero of what would become a frankly stupidly oversized tumour

Ah, denial, here we begin. In my defence one’s mind does not go - indeed probably should not go, lest the curse of hypochondria strike - immediately from a “bad belly” to bowel cancer, especially at 35 and being in very good health otherwise.

I was also not alone in being let down by my bowels in the second half of my 30s - my TikTok feed was funny videos of people in similar situations, and a number of friends were having their own gut gripes. Just a part of getting older, or so I thought.

And truthfully I was eating poorly. My fibre consumption was astonishingly low. I tracked what I ate for a week and there were days on end where I had only trace amounts of fibre. So when I made a deliberate effort to eat more fibre, by golly, I did feel better. Genuinely so.

But yet, not always. I became aware that despite eating well for a period, the symptoms would flare up out of nowhere. And that this was starting to happen more frequently. And then by 2023 there was almost no relation between what I ate and how my bowels felt.

One of the primary symptoms of bowel cancer you are told to look out for is blood in your stool. I can categorically say that in my entire cancer journey, I never once saw a spot of blood in my stool. And this was despite losing a lot of blood it turns out. My tumour began in the deepest part of the large colon, near where it joins the small intestine. It turns out that even if blood enters the bowel here, it is so far away from the end result that by that point there is no visual indicator of it. Sneaky tumour.

The Bowels Change Again

The bowels had one last trick up their colon’ed sleeve as the cancer really took a hold. In 2022 and much of 2023, although there were periods of constipation, bloating and deep pain, the most common feeling was of diarrhoea and general tenderness in the abdomen.

This changed late in 2023 and really escalated into 2024, particularly during the run up to my first attempted surgery and the fitting of my ileostomy stoma. For the uninitiated, my small intestine would henceforth drain into a dainty bag stuck to my front, fitted to the end of one’s small intestine - the other type of stoma being a colostomy one, where it comes out towards the end of one’s large colon, instead of one’s butt.

The tumour was closing my large intestine and the pain if I ate anything too fibrous was brutal. I ate a pot of porridge without thinking in Spring of 2024 and I had to spend a number of hours just lying on the sofa, feeling very sorry for myself.

By this point I was in a bad way and all manner of foods caused problems - even cappuccinos became a dicey proposition for whether I would be crumpled in pain.

Advice

I can’t in good conscience say that “if your bowels change, get down your GP” as perhaps the most active guidance would suggest. I could run 2022-2023 in a simulation a thousand times and the only way a doctor is looking at my bowel at that point is because I have already lost a fight with a large mammal/taxi. Who goes to the GP and says “sometimes I get the shits - but not always - and it seems to respond well when I try eating more fibre”? No sane person I posit.

But maybe a sane person, should they be reading this and their bowels have started to betray them, will take this as a warning to be hyperaware of what else is to come. Especially, as we come to the next symptom.

Weight

Did I mention I have always been fat? For as long as I can remembermy weight has been practically “up and to the right” my whole life. I just loved food - and I probably was (still am?) a food addict [April 2026 edit - it turns out I may have thoroughly undiagnosed ADHD/AuDHD and binge eating is super common. Always be learning…]. I would eat to celebrate, I would eat to commiserate, I would eat because it was Tuesday and Tesco had Terry’s Chocolate Orange’s reduced to £1.50..

Cue the second half of 2022 and my then partner and I spend 5 weeks in Milan. We do not eat conservatively. Milan is an excellent foodie city and we took full advantage of its delights. It was some years ago now but I have some favourite joints I will gladly share - hit me up for them.

However we knew ourselves - we knew we would gorge ourselves. We were staying in a wonderful Airbnb just outside the centre of Milan and just across the street was a CrossFit box. It was brilliant and we went multiple times per week - even if we were like two round pugs trying to keep up with endlessly friendly yet radically fit greyhounds around us.

Upon our return we weigh ourselves, bracing for the impact. My partner puts on a respectable 2-3kg. I weigh myself and… I’ve lost 2kg. I have eaten like a loon for 5 weeks, living on a sea of carbs, tomato sauce and cappuccinos. And I have lost 2kg.

Maybe a sensible person, aware of the preceding bowel issues, becomes concerned.

I, ladies and gentlemen, am many things but a sensible person, I am not. Clearly the only logical idea here is that thrice weekly CrossFit and the magic of “high quality Italian carbs” is what caused this surprising yet welcome weight loss.

This is where our story takes a wonderfully delusional slant. As I have said before, I have always been fat. I try to diet and the weight never seems to come off, and thus I quit, and my weight grows.

Not now though.

I was actually losing weight.

From early 2023 I launched into my longest ever stint of sticking with a diet. I cut back on naughty treats, my partner and I cooked more whole foods and we both committed to CrossFit when we returned to London. So the weight continued to come off. So I continued to eat better. And I lost more weight. So I dieted more. It was working!

In September 2022 I was knocking on 100kg and my current belt was at its limits. In December of 2023 I was under 80kg and I remember distinctly one evening commenting to my partner that I might need to punch some extra holes in the same belt. In addition in September 2023 my partner and I met up with some mutual friends for dinner - the boyfriend (now husband) asked, genuinely, appreciatively, what I was doing to lose weight so well. The girlfriend - and a medical practitioner - started asking questions I would not hear again until I finally started getting diagnosed with Stage 4 cancer in early 2024. She had a face of concern and encouraged me to see a GP. I, of course, ignored her - this was the closest I had ever been to abs! A six pack! One doesn’t quit this close to greatness/ab-ness.

Truly the worst point though was becoming something I have always hated. I became one of those frankly obnoxious people that can open a large bar of chocolate, have a couple of squares, and return it to the cupboard. I was - and happily remain now - someone who inhales chocolate with gay abandon, feeling that intoxicating mix of pride and shame as I gaze upon the empty wrapper.

And lastly - as a moment of peak delusion - I have a diary entry from November 2023 where I have found an old Google Sheet from my weight loss and exercises activities in 2015/2016. I wrote that I was the “lightest I had ever been since I started tracking” Alive Ben can only chuckle darkly at the line that followed:

“Hope it is nothing to worry about!”

Iron, some iron. My kingdom for some iron.

As discussed, I never saw any blood in my stool, Though it turns out I in fact was losing a lot of blood. The effects of this would be at first subtle - and then very much not.

Blood and Energy

After returning from Milan in 2022, my partner and I signed up to a CrossFit box near us in North London. We loved it - I loved it - and I could see the impact. I was definitely getting stronger. I decided to trash my poor partner’s garden in 2023 and do some no-dig vegetable gardening - and I was moving heavy bags of compost like they were nothing.

I laid out 3 large beds in March of 2023 and felt great. All my work is screen-based and so it was great to be outside and physical with a hobby. I have rarely felt a pride and happy tiredness as came from building the first two beds that March. It was a wonder. And it turns out, a high water mark.

By April and into May 2023 I was starting to struggle at CrossFit. I was still gaining in strength but the cardio aspects were murder. I used to have a good level of cardio fitness but the more cardio I did, the worse I seemed to feel. I did a competition at the Crossfit gym in May 2023 and it killed me - and I never made it back to CrossFit properly. But that’s ok. I had just had to make 8 people redundant at my web development studio. I was still losing weight rapidly - too rapidly?. But by golly, look at those tomatoes coming through. This is all fine.

In the summer I went to Hvar, Croatia with some friends and we stayed halfway up the hill near the old town - and getting home every night left me panting. I had climbed the same hills with full Covid in 2020 and I did not pant that hard. But I was fine.

I would drive my car and if I had to hold the clutch for too long, I got cramp so bad I would have to pull over and stretch it somehow. That’s fine!

It is October 2023 and it is time to close down the vegetable garden for the year. In March I was able to dig, carry, pile and move and felt great. Now just trying to remove some pegs from the ground makes me feel like I am climbing Everest. I am just being lazy! Duh.

I had a really nice standing desk at home with a large fancy screen. But it’s late 2023 and I haven’t got the energy to stand up for long periods anymore. This happens as you age!

I have a hot shower - and immediately need to lay down and sleep afterwards. Fine!

I love museums. I just can’t walk around them because my legs are too sore. It feels like I have run a marathon. Lazy!

I go away with my Mum and brother to an expensive resort. I weigh under 80kg, I sleep for 12 hours every night and a shower forces me back to bed for another hour. I. AM. FINE. This is all normal. Show me a person in their 30s who doesn’t feel this way - no, not them - and he’s fine, obviously, and not her. But people feel like this!

Sweat

Alas poor reader, from now on we leave the fun, “well that obviously isn’t cancer… surprise!” symptoms behind and enter completely into delulu land. Had I died of this cancer, not responding to the symptoms ahead would have been scandalous - and I could only have apologised to the people I care for, and who care for me, for being so utterly naive, dumb and frankly selfish.

I write this so bluntly in the hope that someone who reads this - and this may well be future Ben with his head in the sand again - who may be starting to get these symptoms, GET TO A DOCTOR, do not pass go, do not collect £200. These are the advanced symptoms. These are the symptoms where typically your cancer has already metastasised and is savaging more of your body - and frankly, that can be too late. Don’t assume you will be as blindly lucky as I was.

Night sweats.

Almost nothing remotely fine comes with night sweats. With night sweats, even the most optimistic doctor will start to consider lymphoma/blood cancer.

You might be wondering though - how much sweat is a night sweat? I have a warm bedroom, you might say. I always run hot, you may also say. It is a hot summer - I said all these things too to try and fully delude myself from it.

I’ve had sweaty nights - and a night sweat is just so so much worse. How do you know it is a night sweat? Well, here are my experiences.

Do you wear a t-shirt in bed? Ever had to change it multiple times of a night because you have sweat entirely through it? Honestly every time I had a night sweat I could literally wring out my t-shirt - genuinely water dripping from the t-shirt.

Ever sweated so much you have had to change your entire bed sheets? And thrown away pillows because no amount of cleaning will get the stale sweat smell out?

And have you ever done so when sleeping in a ice cold room in the peak of winter - can’t blame it on the summer anymore - and you’re too knackered to change the sheets so you try and sleep in what feels like a freezing cold pool of water?

What was strange, and clearly a sign of the seriousness here, was the seemingly randomness of when the night sweats would occur. I was so cold from the intense anaemia by this point that I often slept with t-shirt, joggers and socks on - and sometimes I would sweat, sometimes not. I much prefer to sleep in just my underwear - cooler you would think - and I would sweat out about the same number of times.

I think it is a credit to my former partner - and more so a sign of how concerned she was for me - that she never mentioned or criticised the night sweats. It cannot have been a pleasant experience sharing a bed with me at the time.I am honestly not sure I would have been so kind in her situation. Which is also to say that, should you have a partner who is starting to sweat out like this (rather a hard symptom to explain away and likely impacts you as well), urge them to see a doctor. Consider hitting them over the head with a comedically large hammer and leaving them outside the GPs with a note, if you have to.

Bert, enter stage left

I like to anthropomorphise things - it pleases my brain and I think gives some welcome mental distance when considering difficult things. Somehow it is easier to think of the tumour (and indeed the stoma that appears later in this story - Homer the stoma) as something not me. From April 2024 onwards, the vast tumour inside me was christened Bert. I can only apologise to anyone sharing his name.

In the history of the earth, there can’t be many men who could feel a tumour in their own body - continue to ignore it for a further 8 months, and still be up and walking about after that. And my teachers said I wouldn’t amount to anything! Ha, jokes on them.

With that in mind, it probably shouldn’t be required PSA that IF YOU CAN FEEL A LARGE LUMP IN YOUR ABDOMEN, GO TO A DOCTOR.

If whilst laying in bed with your partner, you go “hey, check this out” and SHE CAN FEEL A LARGE LUMP IN YOUR ABDOMEN, that’s right, sing it from the back… GO TO A DOCTOR.

Gentle reader, this event in bed occurred in August 2023. I did not see a doctor until March 2024. What manner of delusional story do you think I spun for myself about this?

Hernia.

I clearly had a hernia.

No no, hush, I’ve had a hernia before! In my abdomen no less. Admittedly then I was playing rugby multiple times per week and I could point to the exact moment I got the injury for the hernia. But by now in 2023 I was struggling to exercise at all… hmm…

Bert was so large that as I started the diagnostic journey, I began to see the moment in doctors’ eyes where they went from “just another guy not eating properly” to “don’t look panicked in front of the patient but that feels like a massive tumour” as they felt my abdomen.

Pain

Particular abdominal pain was a thread through the entire cancer experience. I have already discussed the regular bouts of abdominal pain from 2022 onwards. I have so many memories of making a coffee in the kitchen and just gently rubbing my lower right abdomen to ease a sensation that ranged from a feeling of tenderness to genuine soreness. It is so easy to underplay these in each moment - but then when one looks back, it was nearly weekly.

Pain as a symptom spiked as the cancer reached its most advanced stage in late 2023 and early 2024. In particular, it was the afternoon of Thursday 25th January 2024 where it really got going.

An abdominal pain had started the day before but it wasn’t particularly bad. On that walk to the shops, I encountered one of the first 9-10 level pains in my life. You know you look in a bad way when someone in London - central-ish London too - stops to ask if you are ok.

If I bent forward, pretty much at a 90 degree angle, I could just about breathe and manoeuvre. And what’s worse - I couldn’t even make it to the shops…

So, I took some pain medication and went straight to the GP right? This must have been the moment, surely?

Oh dear reader - you still fail to appreciate my levels of delusion. Once I realised I was not immediately going to die of appendicitis, and the pain could be managed with very high doses of ibuprofen and paracetamol, pretty much a full month passed between this and actually seeing a GP…

In May - in hospital recovering from the first and abortive surgery to remove Bert - I was talking with a pain nurse and she said that most likely the pain was a reflective pain from where the tumour was causing a ruckus down in the abdomen; Bert was having his own mosh pit down there, dragging other organs into his merry dance.

LA-LA-LA-LA-LA-LA, I can't hear you

So this is not a physical symptom but it should be the alarm bell that rings the loudest, especially if you cannot or will not see the changes in front of you.

If people you love and respect are getting worried about you, YOU be worried about you. Again, especially if you have a bloke-y “crack on with it” nature and/or have been fortunate enough to have been in good health. As I hope this has shown, it is easy to rationalise away almost everything that hits you. However it is the people around you who can better see the pattern.

My Mum had been raising alarm bells from the summer of 2023 onwards and later into the year my partner and Dad raised an almost weekly chorus to take my health more seriously. All skilfully ignored.

Dawning

It was Christmas 2024 when I put my symptoms into Googleand blood cancer - potentially lymphoma - came out.

I also saw myself - really saw myself - in a hotel mirror and I saw for the first time how small I had become. Though short, I had always been stocky - a scrum half if I could but catch, or pass - with broad shoulders. My head has always been a bit large for my frame but it appeared huge, and my shoulders seemed so very small.

I remember that winter that I needed the heat on full, two additional oil fires, jumpers and blankets to keep warm. That Christmas with family, I was wearing 3 layers indoors at all times - and still feeling the cold. It turns out my increasingly slim body was started to run out of blood/iron. I have never felt the cold like I did that winter.

That, and the start of a bone tiredness - a fatigue that meant I was spending longer and longer in bed.

But the reality was also that I was about to let go the final member of staff as my web development agency shuddered in its death throes. The seven year relationship with my partner was down to its last weeks, days, hours - and in but a moment I was fully moved out and in a new flat, by myself.

Looking back, I think I was too fatigued from the cancer to truly comprehend the total demolition of my once stable existence; and yet too utterly numb from all the change to take in the idea that I might be sick.

Writing this I can only apologise to those who love me for all the stress I caused - and ignoring so so many of the reddest of flags. But to bang the drum again, I want anyone reading this to know that serious illness does not occur in a vacuum. Work will be stressful, you and your partner will have issues, your kids will have colds, the car will need expensive repairs at the worst possible moment - and on top of all that, you might also be becoming desperately unwell.

Be mindful that your ability to usefully tackle all of life’s myriad challenges comes not from hiding from a growing truth. You must take the time to face it head-on and catch it as early as possible. You can then get well, and get back to it. I hope I remember this as I get older and other health challenges appear.

This essay is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International Licence (CC BY-NC 4.0). You are free to share, republish, translate, and adapt it for non-commercial purposes, provided you credit me and link back to the original. For commercial use, please drop me an email - I'll almost always say yes for a good cause.

To expand on this - if the above is remotely useful for you, your community, your NGO, your hospital team, etc, etc. Please please use this any which way you wish -