Some cancers are high profile. They’ve got 'household name' symptoms like a lump in the breast. But other forms of the disease don’t get quite so much press, and as a result, people don’t know enough about how to detect them.

While bowel cancer is a disease predominantly associated with older men, it’s one of the fastest rising cancers in young people. And frighteningly for women of child-bearing age, many of its symptoms (fatigue, nausea, vomiting, rectal bleeding, anaemia, altered bowel habits, and abdominal mass) are the exact same ones that can also occur as a result of pregnancy. With a widespread understanding that pregnancies can be physically gruelling, it means potentially concerning symptoms are being dismissed as ‘normal’ for pregnant women.

It’s exactly what happened to Katy Bruce-Jaja, whose bowel cancer had advanced to stage 4 before it was first picked up.

When Katy became pregnant with her second son last year, it became clear it would be a rough pregnancy from early on. She was sick every day for five months - far longer than the 10 weeks of morning sickness she had suffered in her first pregnancy. A routine 12 week blood test revealed Katy was anaemic, which left her feeling tired and breathless. Her appetite almost entirely disappeared. Doctors gave Katy iron tablets, but they disrupted her bowel habits as she had been warned they might, so she stopped taking them. A 20 week blood test indicated the levels of iron in her blood had continued to drop even lower.

"I just felt tired and unwell, " she tells Cosmopolitan UK. "I’d forgotten what it felt like to feel well."

Despite the ill-feeling, Katy didn’t think too much into her symptoms beyond putting them down to a difficult pregnancy. Living in Brazil at the time for her husband’s work, and unable to speak Portuguese, booking a doctor’s appointment was far more complicated than it would have been if she were back home. So on the pregnancy – and the troublesome symptoms – progressed, without investigation.

"Pregnancy masked my cancer symptoms"pinterest
Katy Bruce-Jaja

Katy’s son Ted was born prematurely by emergency caesarean section, but when weeks passed and the mum-of-two noticed her health didn’t seem to be improving, she became concerned.

"I couldn’t walk down to the end of the road without having to stop and catch my breath. In the evenings I couldn’t read our four-year-old a bedtime story because I couldn’t breathe properly," says Katy. "I just felt tired all the time."

But having done the 'mothering a newborn' thing once before, Katy knew this wasn’t the way she should be feeling. Her nights were punctuated by intense sweats that would drench the bedsheets, and her days were spent feeling emotional and fatigued. Katy’s appetite still hadn’t returned.

One night, as she lay down in bed, she noticed a large lump in her side. "It was probably about the size of a tennis ball. I asked my husband, 'What do you think this is?' and he said he thought maybe it was scar tissue from my abdominal muscles having been cut during the C-section."

"It was like the worst stitch imaginable. I couldn’t move"

The bulge in her side played on Katy’s mind for the next few weeks, so she booked an appointment with a specialist for the following month. But when she began to experience crippling pain around in her abdomen following an unusually big meal, Katy knew she had to seek help urgently.

"I’d had similar pain before, but this was extreme; like the worst stitch imaginable. I couldn’t move."

Equally as concerned, Katy’s husband took her to A&E first thing the following morning. She underwent scans, and was quickly told she had an 11cm tumour on her bowel. It was cancerous, doctors said, and it had spread to her liver.

The diagnosis explained everything. The tumour on Katy’s bowel had been ‘micro-bleeding’ - sapping her body of its iron levels and, as a result, draining Katy of all her energy. It wasn’t the iron tablets that had interfered with her bowel habits, it was the disease impeding the organ from doing its job properly. Her loss of appetite was a subconscious reaction to her body being unable to process most foods. The cancer in her liver was likely the cause of her constant vomiting. The bulging tumour had been masked by her pregnancy bump.

Katy underwent surgery in Brazil, ridding her bowel of the cancerous tumour, and as she began to recover from the operation, she could instantly feel the difference in her health.

"I just felt better. I had more energy and was less tired. I had my appetite back. It was bizarre how quickly I felt so different."

"Pregnancy masked my cancer symptoms"pinterest
Katy Bruce-Jaja

As soon as Katy was well enough to fly, she and her family moved back to the UK, where she is now continuing her treatment. While the operation has removed the cancer from her bowel, doctors have explained that the tumours on her liver are inoperable. For Katy, it will be a case of living with her cancer for as long as she can; trying different treatments and hoping for new medical advances.

"When I told my obstetrician in Brazil about my cancer diagnosis in a follow-up appointment after Ted was born, I could see she was horrified. She was upset that she hadn’t spotted it herself," says Katy. "But I don’t blame her. I think, what are the chances? She probably sees pregnant women who are anaemic and tired every day.

"I was so worried about my baby’s health when maybe I should have been thinking about my own"

"It was never on my radar to get cancer. It just didn’t occur to me that this could happen," says Katy. "I was so worried about my baby’s health throughout the pregnancy, when maybe I should also have been thinking about my own health, too.

"I just didn’t suspect anything," she adds. "I thought it was a bad pregnancy. Some of my other friends felt terrible for the whole nine months and I just put it down to that."

Since being diagnosed with stage 4 cancer, Katy has had to work through several 'what ifs'. "There was lots of, 'What if I’d got pregnant earlier and had a baby sooner, would I have picked up on symptoms?' or, 'What if I hadn’t been pregnant at all?' But I just think – would I change things? Would I not have Ted? No. And there’s nothing else I can do about it," she says.

For Katy, there’s no use dwelling on what might have been. But for other women, there is the opportunity to learn from information Katy was not fortunate enough to know.

When pregnancy masks cancer symptomspinterest
Bowel Cancer UK and Sophie Mayanne
Katy with her two sons

"Though cases like Katy’s are rare, unfortunately we do hear from patients who experience delays to their diagnosis because of their age, and additionally pregnancy can also mask the symptoms," Deborah Alsina MBE, Chief Executive of Bowel Cancer UK, tells Cosmopolitan.

"Many younger people are not aware of the symptoms of bowel cancer, and because it is relatively rare often healthcare professionals also do not associate it with this age group. This combination of factors can lead to delays in people seeking help from their GP.

"Bowel cancer is very treatable but the earlier it is diagnosed, the easier it is to treat. People whose cancer is diagnosed at an early stage have a much higher chance of successful treatment than those whose cancer has become more widespread," says Deborah.


The most common symptoms of bowel cancer include:

  • Bleeding from your bottom and/or blood in your poo
  • Unexplained weight loss
  • Extreme tiredness for no obvious reasons
  • A persistent and unexplained change in bowel habit
  • Pain or lump in your tummy

"Most people with these symptoms don’t have bowel cancer. Other health problems can cause similar symptoms. But if you have one or more of these, or if things just don’t feel right, go to see your GP," advises Deborah.

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