When Lisa Duce started noticing a little bit of blood when she went to the toilet, she didn't think too much about it. or signup to continue reading Her father and his father had both had haemorrhoids so she assumed it was the same. "You know how you go to the doctor and they say 'oh is there anything else I can do for you today?' and you say 'oh, no, no, no, I'm fine'? After 18 months of that.
.. I said to the nurse 'well, I've got a little bit of bleeding but I think it's probably haemorrhoids'," Ms Duce said.
With four weeks she was at the getting radiation and chemotherapy for stage three bowel cancer. June is . It's Australia's deadliest cancer for people aged between 25 and 44-years-old.
says the disease kills 103 Australians every week. But it's one of the most treatable types of cancer when detected early. Six million Australians aged between 50 and 74-years-old were invited to participate in the National Bowel Cancer Screening Program in 2022.
However, only 40 per cent took part. It was a scary statistic, Ms Duce said, especially knowing how easy the testing is. In the Dubbo local government area the statistics are even worse.
Screening rates are 10 per cent lower than the Australia average "People in our area, a lot of them are farmers. They raise animals, they breed animals, they muck out stalls. We help calves being born and sheep being born.
We're used to having our arms up to the elbow in it and yet everybody is so scared about putting a glove on and poking a lit.