Doctors said I had a urine infection, but it was stage four bowel cancer

Zoe Gardner-Lawson, 36, an HR manager and mum-of-three from Berkshire, was devastated to discover she had stage-four bowel cancer last September, having spent a month suffering an increasingly bad pain in her lower back.

Usually healthy, Zoe, busy with a five-year-old son and one-year-old twins, rarely went to the doctor, but in August last year, she made a phone appointment with her GP, who diagnosed a urinary tract infection (UTI) and prescribed a five-day course of antibiotics.

But when the pain didn't go away, Zoe was given two further courses of antibiotics that month. "There was just no change and by my third dose, I'd really deteriorated," she recalls. "I was basically bedridden – I felt so unwell and the back pain had spread to my stomach too."

When she went back to her doctor mid-Sept, he told her to go straight to A&E. At first, after some initial tests, the hospital doctors thought she had kidney stones – which can also cause an acute back pain, similar to Zoe's symptoms.

But they turned out to be wrong and to Zoe's horror, another scan later revealed bombshell news – instead, she had stage-four bowel cancer, with a life-threatening 5cm tumour.

After her initial misdiagnosis, she'd been referred to a different department for blood tests.

"My blood was checked for infection markers, called 'creatine reactive proteins'," she explains. Doctors found Zoe's levels were way above the normal range, so a surgeon rushed in to see her. "He said it looked like I had a build-up of fluid on my stomach," she says. "I threw my toys out of the pram then, I told them I wasn’t going to leave until I had a full-body CT scan."

The scan went ahead and Zoe was told she had a perforation on her bowel and needed to be admitted to hospital immediately. It was then another consultant found she had a lime-sized tumour on her bowel that had caused the perforation. Even worse, the cancer had already spread to her liver and lymph nodes.

She was transferred to another hospital, where a new consultant revealed the full extent of her condition. "He told me I needed emergency surgery to remove the tumour from my bowel and get rid of all the fluid and waste which had seeped out," says Zoe.

She underwent a gruelling four-hour operation in early October to remove as much of the tumour and other affected areas as possible, leaving her to adjust to a new life with a stoma bag.

A biopsy then revealed the tumour was a cancerous 'blastoma' – one of the most aggressive forms of cancer – and Zoe was told she’d need to triple her chemo dose during her ongoing treatment, meaning the side effects would be even more severe. 'I’ve tolerated chemo as well as anyone can, but it’s pretty hardcore," reveals Zoe. "I’m on round five of eight cycles in total."

Desperate to give herself the best possible chance of recovery, she has also been under the care of a natural therapy clinic. "I've been having IV vitamin C infusions, as well as receiving diet and exercise advice. I’ve taken the approach to 'throw the kitchen sink at it' to improve my prognosis as much as possible."

Most galling of all is knowing that if she'd been offered the standard bowel cancer screening test sooner, doctors would have caught her cancer years earlier. Zoe now has to come to terms with the fact her cancer could be terminal.

Desperate to make sure no one else ends up risking their lives, Zoe is now campaigning to get the bowel cancer screening test rolled out to younger people, lowering the age the standard FIT (faecal immunochemical test) takes place to at least 30 years old – if not 25. (At the moment, bowel cancer screening tests are only routinely offered to those over the age of 54.)

Zoe and her husband Sam have had to live with the knowledge that her prognosis is unclear. Later this month, she will find out whether or not the chemotherapy has worked and helped to shrink her cancerous tumours.

Despite everything, Zoe is determined to stay positive, focussing on her immediate treatment. "The plan is, once I’ve had my sixth round of chemo, they’re hoping I’ll have responded well," she explains. "I’ll probably need to be booked in for a second surgery – to remove my remaining cancerous growths in my liver and lymph nodes." In the meantime, Zoe is determined to lead the best possible life she can.

Zoe has a GoFundMe link to help pay for her treatment journey.

Additional research: SWNS

Read more about bowel cancer:

• Woman cancer-free after receiving UK’s first liver transplant for advanced bowel cancer (Independent, 4-min read)

• Bowel cancer cases in young people rising sharply in England, study finds (MyLondon, 4-min read)

• I battled bowel cancer, debt and losing the family home before my £1M lottery win (Yahoo Life UK, 5-min read)