Skip to content
Search AI Powered

Latest Stories

Athlete Horrified After ‘Hernia’ Is Revealed To Be Stage Four Bowel Cancer

Athlete Horrified After ‘Hernia’ Is Revealed To Be Stage Four Bowel Cancer
Heidi Cresswell/PA Collect

A sporty woman has told of her horror after discovering what she thought was a hernia was actually stage four bowel cancer.

Finding a lump in her abdomen one morning two years ago, Heidi Cresswell, 38 – a keen cyclist and snowboarder – saw her GP believing she had a hernia, caused by an internal part of the body pushing through a weakness in the muscle or surrounding tissue wall.


Heidi, a knitting magazine journalist, who lives in Great Braxted, Essex, with her IT consultant husband, Peter, 37, and their cats, Arnie and Poppy, said:

“I’m quite sporty and thought maybe I’d given myself a hernia, as I knew they could be caused by physical exertion.”

Heidi at the gym before her diagnosis (PA Real Life/Collect)

“I’d been feeling under the weather – a little bit feverish and not quite right – but I thought maybe I was just coming down with the flu.”

Sent straight to the hospital for tests by her doctor, within a week Heidi and Peter received the devastating news that she had stage four bowel cancer, which had spread to her lymph nodes.

“As I heard those words, I felt like the room had started spinning,” she recalled.

“It was just a surreal moment and at one point I thought I was going to black out.”

Heidi after her surgery (PA Real Life/Collect)

The eldest of three siblings, despite losing both sets of her grandparents to cancer, Heidi said she had never thought she would have it herself.

“Yes, my grandparents had cancer but they were all in their 80s – not my age,” she said.

“The diagnosis was a huge shock. I just wasn’t expecting it.”

Another shock came when she realised that her surgery to remove 1kg of cancerous bowel, at The London Clinic on Harley Street in September 2016, would mean she had to have a stoma bag to collect her waste, attached to an opening on the front of her abdomen.

Heidi and Peter in Flatford Mill, Essex, just before Christmas 2018 (PA Real Life/Collect)

“Before the surgery, I was told there was a very low chance I would have a stoma, but I remember coming to from the operation and hearing one of the nurses saying, ‘She’s got a stoma,’” she recalled.

“I started crying because I just didn’t know how I was going to deal with it. It’s just not something you expect to have as a young person."
“It was so difficult to come to terms with the fact my waste would be in a bag, which I would have to wear all the time and deal with making noises in the middle of the cinema. But actually, I did get used to it. It does become a normal part of life.”

Heidi and Peter in Austria, early 2019 (PA Real Life/Collect)

One of the ways Heidi dealt with her cancer treatment, which as well as the stoma bag, involved two further operations and eight rounds of chemotherapy over the next six months, was by heeding her husband’s advice to be stubborn.

She explained:

“Peter is my rock, but I didn’t know how he was going to get through it all, so I was crying one day and apologizing for putting him through such an ordeal."
“He just turned round and said, ‘I’m sorry I can’t find a way to fix this. I don’t know how to fix this, so I need you to be stubborn.’ So I was.’”

Luckily, as surgeons caught the cancer in its early stages and cut it out, Heidi’s treatment was a success and, following the third bowel operation in July 2017, her doctors declared that she was cancer free and, to her relief, took away her stoma bag.

Sadly, however, her relief was short-lived, because just a year later in July 2018, a routine CT scan showed the cancer was back and her treatment resumed – with more surgery planned to remove any remaining lymph nodes that contain cancerous cells in May 2019.


Heidi, who is speaking out during the UK's Bowel Cancer Awareness Month and being supported by the charity Bowel Cancer UK, continued:

“There is not as much cancer this time, so we started with chemotherapy, which is working.”

Heidi showing her stoma bag (PA Real Life/Collect)

She added:

“In September 2018, Peter and I decided to have IVF before I started chemo the following month, and now have two embryos frozen so can hopefully one day start a family when this is all over.”

Throughout her grueling treatment – which has also seen her needing additional surgery after an infection turned part of her bowel gangrenous, and suffering a punctured lung caused by the routine insertion of a Hickman line to deliver the chemotherapy drugs – Heidi has dreamed of returning to work and to writing.

“People talk a lot about the treatments and the diagnosis, but nobody talks about what it all does to your mental health,” said Heidi.

Heidi during chemotherapy with her cats, Poppy and Arnie (PA Real Life/Collect)

She continued:

“When I was told I was cancer free the first time, instead of being elated I was depressed and really struggling to find a life past all the treatment."
“One of the doctors told me it is a form of post-traumatic stress disorder, but it’s not something that gets talked about and it should be.”

To combat the stress of it all, Heidi has kept a diary recording her cancer journey, which she now hopes to publish as a book, and is also writing a blog called Five Things About Cancer.

Heidi and Peter in Germany, summer 2018 – before she knew the cancer was back (PA Real Life/Collect)

“When you’re so ill and having treatment, you can’t face reading long articles about the condition and how to cope, so I sort of boil it down to a shortened version of what’s happening,” she said. “It includes what you need to know and how I am living with bowel cancer."
“It can feel very lonely going through cancer. Even when you have fantastic support like I have, you do still think nobody else knows what you’re going through."
“The mental strain is enormous and not something people really talk about, which is what I really want to change. That and encouraging more awareness that a cancer we think only older people get can affect younger people, like me, too.”

Follow Heidi’s blog at fivethingsaboutcancer.home.blog/blog

More from Trending

Signal app logo; J.D. Vance
Jaap Arriens/NurPhoto via Getty Images; Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Signal's Founder Epically Roasts Vance Over The Disastrous Group Chat Debacle

Signal founder Matthew Rosenfeld, better known by the pseudonym Moxie Marlinspike, mocked Vice President J.D. Vance after the app found itself at the center of the Trump administration's group text scandal.

Rosenfeld's post came amid revelations that Atlantic editor Jeffrey Goldberg was invited into a Signal chat with high-level Trump administration officials, particularly Vance and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, discussing military strategy surrounding war strikes in Yemen.

Keep ReadingShow less
MTG, Martha Kelner
C-SPAN

MTG Blasted For Her Unhinged Reaction To A UK Reporter Asking Her A Question

Far right Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene was bashed for viciously shutting down a British reporter who had a question about the Signal group chat scandal, AKA "Signalgate."

Republican President Donald Trump's administration continues to downplay concerns after The Atlantic'seditor-in-chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, was mistakenly added to the Signal messaging app's group chat in which U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth shared with top intelligence officials the specific weapons programs regarding the U.S. war strikes on Houthi rebels in Yemen.

Keep ReadingShow less
Screenshot of Rachel Maddow
MSNBC

Rachel Maddow Gives Trump A Blistering Reality Check After His 'Perfect' Presidency Claims

MSNBC anchor Rachel Maddow criticized President Donald Trump after he claimed "we've had two perfect months" to start out his presidency—conveniently downplaying "Signalgate" and ignoring all the scandals that have thus far struck his administration.

You can see his comments to reporters in the video below:

Keep ReadingShow less
train crossing in small town
craig kerwien on Unsplash

People Share Their Most Embarrassing Small Town Stories

I lived most of my life in a very small town in Northern Maine. There were about 200 kids in my high school and there were 56 kids in my graduating class—we were tied with the class of 1961 for the largest class ever.

When the primary employer in town—Pinkham Lumber Mill—shut down, the town got even smaller. Now the senior class is considered large if it reaches double digits.

Keep ReadingShow less
A post-it with "I Quit" written on it over a computer keypad
a yellow notepad on a keyboard
Photo by Nick Fewings on Unsplash

People Reveal Why They Quit Their Job On The First Day

As much as anyone may want to quit a job, at the end of the day it's easier said than done.

For one thing, even if people are working soul-sucking jobs that barely cover expenses, they still can't afford to lose the paycheck, until something better comes along.

Keep ReadingShow less