A woman has revealed how she missed the early signs of cancer until she was diagnosed five months later.
Jody Horne, from Melbourne, was happy, healthy and fit but had put her unexplained symptoms - which included tiredness, blood in her stools and occasional discomfort - to the back of her mind as she enjoyed her life and didn't consider that she could be getting ill.
Yet just two weeks before her 29th birthday, Jody was delivered a devastating blow as she was diagnosed with stage 2 rectal cancer.
Speaking to 7Life, Jody explained: "I was young and enjoying life and then the carpet pulled out from underneath me.
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"I felt shocked and numb. It was an incredibly upsetting experience..."
She added how her younger sister, who was with her when the diagnosis was delivered, became unwell as Jody was told the news of her cancer.
She added: "It was beyond crushing for us both in that moment."
Jody's symptoms hadn't seemed too severe, so she'd put them off for months until she suffered a rectal bleed that lasted for five hours.
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The unusual incident had pushed her to seek help at an after hours medical clinic, where a doctor said "to go to Emergency if the bleeding didn’t stop soon, and if it did, to see a gastroenterologist."
Whilst the bleeding eventually slowed, Jody made an appointment to see a gastroenterologist who performed a sigmoidoscopy a few weeks later. A sigmoidoscopy can screen for rectal cancers, and on Jody's scan it detected a polyp.
As the next stage of investigation, Jody was asked to have a colonoscopy to have the polyp removed, but this is where the bad news came as medics discovered a tumour.
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After a biopsy confirmed the tumour was cancerous, Jody was diagnosed with stage two rectal cancer just two weeks before she turned 29.
In shock after being told the news, Jody called her father and found herself delivering the devastating news over the phone. She described it as 'the most awful thing' to have to tell her parents, family and friends of her cancer diagnosis.
As part of her treatment for the cancer, Jody underwent five-and-a-half weeks of daily pelvic radiotherapy and chemotherapy. She also underwent a 'life-saving' temporary ileostomy during two major surgeries, as well as treatments such as fertility preservation to freeze her eggs for future plans to have children.
The heavy treatment has left Jody in early stage menopause as she explained that her uterus has been so heavily impacted, it could mean she is 'unlikely to safely carry a pregnancy'.
She added: "Having a family will look very different now (surrogacy or adoption) from how I might have imagined it to look."
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Whilst she's now cancer free, Jody has been clear to stress the importance of not ignoring signs and symptoms.
Early stages can include common signs such as blood in stool, abdominal pain or bloating, constipation, diarrhoea, unexplained weight loss, tiredness, weakness or breathlessness.
Jody urged: "These are the symptoms that you should look out for, and importantly, talk about and share with your loved ones.
"There’s no taboo about poo, it’s just an aspect of our health; we need to talk more about it and we need to break down the stigma."
Niamh Spence