“It could have been a lot worse for me and I’m so grateful to be able to tell my story to raise awareness of bowel cancer”
In 2017, then aged 57, Paul Vickers, a truck driver and father of six, was experiencing stomach problems and he later began to notice blood in his poo. “I had these symptoms from September/October time, but a typical man of my generation – I ignored them. By Christmas, I was taking painkillers because the pain was getting worse. Every time I went to the bathroom, I was in severe pain. Eventually, by February, I collapsed in the house and my wife rushed me to the Emergency Department in Tallaght Hospital.”
“They gave me a prescription for Buscopan for stomach pain and told me visit my GP. I was released and when I gave my GP the history of my symptoms, he referred me for an urgent colonoscopy. I wasn’t seen to until May. After that colonoscopy things moved very quickly. They could see my rectal passage was not good and they removed several large polyps. The next day, I was back for surgery to bypass my bowel and they fitted a stoma bag to my small intestine. That relieved the pain I was in. It was high up on my righthand side near my bellybutton. It was then they took biopsies and a week to ten days later, I got the news that I had colorectal cancer.”
"Well my head went straight to my wife Grace, our four young children and how they would cope if I was gone."
When he got the news, Paul didn’t think of himself. “Well my head went straight to my wife Grace, our four young children and how they would cope if I was gone. I have two older children well into their 30s, so of course, I thought of them as well, but more so the younger ones who I’m the main breadwinner for. I was rolling the clock forward thinking how long will it be until I can get back to work and in the meantime, how are we going to afford everything?”
For his treatment, Paul went on chemotherapy tablets and required radiotherapy. “I was up and down to James’s on the Luas for my radiotherapy and was on chemotherapy drugs. My radiotherapy finished around the end of July, but I stayed on the chemo tablet another week or so. I got worse as the treatment progressed. I was just absolutely drained by it all. Wrecked tired. They booked me in for surgery in late September, I needed a 6-week wait to recover from chemo and radio to get my body ready. Then I had my bowel resection surgery.”
After a 9-hour surgery, and 5-6 days recovery, Paul was discharged. “Hindsight is wonderful, but looking back, I probably left hospital a bit too soon. Lying there, I was thinking somebody else could use this bed. In the weeks after, I wasn’t right. I had a pain in my gut, around my lower back and all around the pelvic area. After going back to hospital for a check up, I was just told it’s bruising from the operating table from the 9-hour surgery, but it persisted. I ended up taking an awful lot of pain medication. I wasn’t myself, I felt out of it. I pushed for them to do some checks so they put me forward for a CT scan and I had a big infection from my resection surgery. They said I wasn’t strong enough for further surgery so it would have to be drained out. I won’t go into the details of how that was done, but needless to say, it wasn’t very pleasant!”
"I’m so grateful to be able to tell my story to raise awareness of bowel cancer and to encourage people to know what the symptoms are and to get checked out if you’re experiencing any of them."
After his infection cleared in early 2018, and after a period of recovery, Paul’s stoma was reversed in late 2018. He’s sharing his story to encourage anybody experiencing any persistent symptoms to visit your GP and seek guidance. “Looking back, I totally did the wrong thing. I had just moved jobs and I told myself, you can’t be messing around taking time off work when you don’t even know if there’s something wrong with you. It could have been a lot worse for me and I’m so grateful to be able to tell my story to raise awareness of bowel cancer and to encourage people to know what the symptoms are and to get checked out if you’re experiencing any of them. I am so grateful for the treatment I received. I can’t commend the compassion and professionalism of the hospital staff enough. Life is good now. I took early retirement after I got better. I’m a stay-at-home dad and I do the school runs and I can honestly say, I’ve never been happier.”
To find out more about Bowel Cancer, please visit cancer.ie/bowel.
To speak to one of our trained cancer nurses to seek confidential advice and support, please call our freephone Support Line at 1800 200 700
