Adele Roberts has shared her experience of being diagnosed with bowel cancer a year ago this week and how important raising awareness continues to be.
The Radio 1 DJ, 43, was diagnosed with stage two bowel cancer last October and has continued to share a no-holds-barred look at the reality of treatment and life with a stoma, which she and her partner Kate Holderness have nicknamed ‘Audrey’.
Adele revealed to Metro.co.uk that she was inspired to be open about her experiences after the awareness raised by Dame Deborah James helped her spot the first subtle signs of bowel cancer and be treated early.
She explained: ‘I think people like Dame Deborah James speaking out is brilliant thing. Bowel cancer is the second biggest cancer killer in the UK, which I didn’t realise until I got it.
‘When I first started experiencing my symptoms, I just thought it was a bit of a dodgy tummy. Kate said it was because I wasn’t cooking my kale properly. She was like “it’s you, you’re bad at cooking!”
‘And hopefully now if people have seen what I’ve been through, and what Deborah has been through, people will go, “oh, hang on a minute, I might just need to speak to somebody and just get a bit more help and clarification and maybe have a test just to check I’m okay.”’
Following the death of Dame Deborah, record numbers of people came forward to seek bowel cancer checks and toilet paper manufacturers made the decision to post the symptoms of bowel cancer onto packaging to help save more lives.
Commonly seen as a disease which affects older people, the symptoms – which include a persistent change in bowel habits, blood in your poo or pain, bloating and discomfort – can be something younger people dismiss rather than getting vital checks early.
Adele added: ‘I’ve met so many young people that have been affected by bowel cancer. And unfortunately, because it’s rare in younger people, it means that it gets picked up later, and therefore it’s more deadly.
‘That’s what happens to Deborah James, sadly hers got detected too late on so it had spread in her body. Whereas I was so lucky that they got it at stage two with me.
‘But if I hadn’t been aware of the great work she’d have done, I might have been stage three, stage four, and it might be a different story for me. So I think the screening age should be brought down if it could be.’
The former I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here star had sought medical advice after noticing blood in her poo, but was initially told it was unlikely to be cancer as she was only in her early 40s.
‘This is the kind of sinister thing about cancer, and especially bowel cancer, I did not feel ill. I felt in the best shape of my life, I was running all the time and it was only the fact that I started to have blood when I went to the toilet that luckily was a flag to me to go and see somebody.
‘Apart from that, I had no idea. So I’m so happy that people are talking about it more, because hopefully it will help save someone’s life.’
She added: ’I was lucky, actually, because the doctor that saw me did say “I don’t think it’s anything sinister, I think it’s piles but I’ll just give you this home testing kit, do that for us and then we’ll see what happens.”
‘And thank God she did, but she did say “you’re too young for bowel cancer.” She actually said those words, so luckily, she just gave me the kit anyway.’
Adele has also not shied away from sharing tales of Audrey the stoma with her followers over the past 12-months, including when things have gone wrong, such as a recent prolapse.
Such occurrences can be scary to witness but are commonplace and, as Adele found, usually easy to fix with a home remedy (in this case, sugar to make the stoma retract back inside the body).
Adele also shared snaps from a recent holiday with Kate in which she rocked a bikini in the pool with her stoma on show and has often shared snaps of Audrey on her social media account.
She explained: ‘I didn’t realise that it was a hidden disability. I didn’t realise there’s over 200,000 people in the UK with a stoma of all different ages. There’s kids with stomas, there’s older people with stomas, and I just didn’t see it. And I thought, why not? Why are people hiding their stomas?
‘If I can help in any way and show that there’s nothing wrong with it, and that you can lead a full life with a stoma, I just thought why not do it and hopefully I can help some people.
‘I think the more we all talk about it, the more we realise stuff happens in life. You can’t control it, but you can deal with it and move on.’
Adele has also teamed up with Bupa Health Tracks, a playlist the healthcare provider crowdsourced from the British public, containing 22 hours of music that people most associate with their daily health and wellness wins.
With music being such a huge part of Adele’s life, it was something she turned to during her own recent health journey too.
While she used to enjoy running, that has been more difficult due to chemo damaging the skin on her feet and her stoma being sore, but Adele has been embracing walks in nature to get her steps in nonetheless.
She revealed that she loves musicals and ‘camp’ music – which her I’m A Celeb co-stars ribbed her for in the jungle – but songs have taken on a new meaning for her since her diagnosis.
‘Music was fundamental throughout my health journey,’ she says. ‘I’ve loved music ever since I was a little girl and it’s always been there for me.
‘When things were tough when I was younger, I just used to put my headphones on and listen to people like Whitney Houston and she’d just take me mentally to a different place. I used that as well when I was in hospital as I obviously had to have my headphones on so I wasn’t disturbing the other patients, but listening to music got me through so much and it kept me on track.
‘One of the main things I did when I’d had my surgery was try and get back to Radio 1 as quickly as possible just so that I could be in a studio again listen to music and be around amazing listeners and the Radio 1 family.
‘After this, health journey, you also hear lyrics differently. The words hit different, and that’s another special thing about this playlist.
‘So for example, Gloria Gaynor, I Will Survive – I always had that as a lip-sync track and I’d imagine I’m a drag queen and lip sync for my life to that.
‘But those words now make me so emotional, and they mean so much more. It’s like, “cancer you will not take me, I’m gonna fight you all the way.” So it absolutely has transformed and enhanced music for me.’
Listen to Bupa’s Health Tracks playlist here and hashtag #BupaHealthTracks on social media.
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