1. Mum died after doctors told her she was “too young” for bowel cancer.
Perth woman Kathy Narrier said she knew her daughter, Nicole Yarran, was sick, well before the final diagnosis.
“Early in 2015, that’s when I started realising that she was losing a lot of weight,” Kathy told ABC’s 7.30. “She had no energy. If you knew Nicole you knew there was something wrong.”
But the doctors disagreed and it wasn’t until Nicole, aged 32 and expecting her third child, underwent a routine ultrasound earlier this year that bowel cancer was detected.
By that time, it had spread to her liver. “It was a death sentence,” Kathy said. The mother-of-three died in September this year.
“She told him the symptoms, that she had bleeding from the bowel,” Kathy explained, adding the doctors said she was “too young” for bowel cancer.
“He boiled it down to irritable bowel syndrome and kept giving her medication for that. They wouldn’t do the stool test, no colonoscopy or nothing. They just said that she was too young.”
Kathy is speaking out to raise awareness and to warn others: if you believe something is wrong. Really wrong. Speak out and don’t take ‘no’ for an answer. “Don’t take their word,” she said.
According to Bowel Cancer Australia, the disease remains the second most common cause of death from cancer. And, speaking to the ABC, colorectal surgeon Dr Graham Newstead said its diagnosis among young people is on the rise.
“We’re seeing younger people with bowel cancer whereas in the past, when I was a medical student, it was a disease for people well over their 50s, 60s, 70s and 80s,” he said.