Skip to playerSkip to main content
  • 5 weeks ago
Nearly one in two of us will be diagnosed with cancer at some point in our lives. David Nicholas Wilkinson is one of them, twice over. In 2020, a colonoscopy found his bowel to be extremely healthy for a man his age. In 2023, a FIT test came back clear and, like almost everyone who takes one, he assumed that meant the all-clear. In 2024, a second colonoscopy found bowel cancer. Stage 4. He was told his tumour was 5-6 years old. What went wrong? A FIT test looks for blood. Wilkinson’s tumour never bled. Nor do a great many others. 1 IN 2 follows Wilkinson through his own treatment, where he discovers a steep rise in bowel cancer among people far too young to be screened for it, and far too young, it seems, to be believed. Among those who tell him their stories is a bowel surgeon whose own symptoms were dismissed by her oncologist colleagues and in part by herself because she was only 44.
Transcript
00:00How old were you when you were first?
00:0144
00:02I was only just turning 40
00:03I was 37
00:0432 when I got diagnosed
00:06I was 19
00:10Every single person I know that is my age or younger has been dismissed, has been told that they've got
00:17anxiety
00:18He said, you've got IBS, you're always going to have that
00:21My GP said because of my age it was unlikely to be bowel cancer
00:27I was born in this hospital 70 years ago and back then in the 1950s the only people that got
00:32bowel cancer were people the age I am now
00:36I had a very healthy colon for a man my age, I now have what is basically terminal cancer
00:45Symptoms are symptoms regardless of age, gender, circumstances
00:50When I go for treatment every two weeks nearly half the room are my age or younger
00:56The biggest thing I learnt from being sick I suppose was the kindness of people
01:02I do find it comforting, this kind of comic element
01:07Is this measuring you for a casket?
01:11I may never be cured but I can still live as happily as I can, for as long as I
01:17can
01:21Cancers on the increase and the complexity of cancer treatments have increased
01:28I'm throwing the kitchen sink at it, I've got a little boy and I want to live so I'm trying
01:33everything
01:33I just hope when a young person presents symptoms they are no longer dismissed, they're being far too young
01:41To be continued...
01:47Just stay in my mind
01:49You

Recommended