I'm taking part in this event in the name of bowel cancer prevention and to raise essential funds for the Jodi Lee Foundation.
This year my family has been personally touched by bowel cancer. My husband Mark was diagnosed with bowel cancer just before christmas and has just endured 6 months of intensive chemotherapy.
Mark was 46 when he was diagnosed and due to his age had never thought it necessary to take a bowel cancer screening test. He was largely assymptomatic up until a month before his diagnosis. By the time he was diagnosed the tumour was so large it had blocked his bowel and broken through the bowel wall and into the surrounding tissue. The oncologist said, due to the size of the tumour, it would have been present for at least 5 years. An early screening test would have made a huge difference to our families lives over the last 6 months.