Deborah James has shared an update on her battle with bowel cancer, revealing she is doing better after some difficult months which left her wondering how she is alive.
The bowel cancer campaigner, 40, has spent most of the year in hospital after experiencing a serious bleed and infections, but says she is slowly on the way to recovery.
Lorraine Kelly visited Deborah at the Royal Marsden Hospital in London where she currently remains, as part of the No Butts campaign encouraging viewers not to ignore the warning signs of bowel cancer.
When asked how she was feeling, Deborah responded: ‘Fragile. I’m wearing makeup and I’ve brushed my hair, which in a weird way is progress, to be honest with you.
‘Three weeks ago, I couldn’t get myself out of bed to go to the toilet, I couldn’t stand up.’
She added: ‘A couple of times this year [she almost died]. If I’m being honest, I don’t really know how I’m alive.
‘This year has been really crazy. I’ve spent about 80 percent of this year in hospital in some capacity. In January, I had a very scary experience where I had a varices bleed. I thought that was it.
‘I can only now talk about it without crying. In a split second, I went from living to thinking that I wouldn’t get through the night. And none of my family did. My body is tired.’
Deborah also urged people to keep an eye on their own bodies and see their doctors to catch bowel cancer early, admitting she wished she had ‘pushed harder’ to get her own diagnosis sooner.
She continued: ‘I have lived with bowel cancer for over five years, which is amazing. But had my cancer been caught early, I wouldn’t be living on a knife edge.
‘So for me, the No Butts campaign is all about just catching things early, because we know that when cancer is caught early, it’s really curable. We want people to not be embarrassed to talk about anything when it comes to poo.’
Deborah vowed that she was ‘going to get through this’, and advised viewers: ‘Trust your gut. Don’t ever feel like you’re wasting somebody else’s time, especially not a GP’s time.
‘I wish that I had pushed and pushed and pushed six months earlier. Just gotta remember to trust your gut. There’s No Butts about it!’
Lorraine airs weekdays at 9am on ITV and ITV Hub.
Credit: Original article published here.You can read this post on My Celebrity Life.
