Steve Burrows, 38, joked that his back pain was a result of ‘old age’ but was unaware the aches came from tumours pressing down on his nerves from late-stage rectal cancer – which killed him eight weeks later
Steve Burrows, 38, died eight weeks after developing back pain(Image: Kennedy News and Media)
A dad-of-four who joked his back pain was “just old age” died just days after discovering his twinges were a devastating terminal illness.
Steve Burrows, 38, developed the symptom only eight weeks before he tragically lost his battle to the disease. The dad, from St Neots in Cambridgeshire, experienced “twinges” in his lower back and began doing yoga-style stretches to help manage the pain.
He joked at the time that it was “just old age,” unaware the aches were a result of tumours pressing down on his nerves from stage 4 rectal cancer. Tragically, Steve’s condition quickly deteriorated and he was transferred to a hospice where he died on September 27.
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Steve’s condition quickly deteriorated(Image: Kennedy News and Media)
His former partner Bethan Kester is now urging others not to ignore any unusual symptoms – and to get them checked by a doctor immediately. Speaking about Steve’s case, Bethan, 35, said: “It’s devastating for my whole family. It was literally a month ago he got told he got cancer to not being here, it’s taken the wind out of all of us.
“He started getting some twinges in his lower back and he was trying to do yoga-style stretches to alleviate the pain. Before we knew what it was [the pain] was pretty much all day every day.
“There would be parts of the day it would just be a dull ache and [others] the pain would spike. He’d be on his knees on the floor hugging the sofa stretching out because he thought it was sciatica.” She added: “It escalated from there to the point he was bent over and couldn’t really move far. He’d make jokes all the time about getting older.”
Bethan said the cancer ‘completely ravaged’ Steve’s body(Image: Kennedy News and Media)
He’d say to my kids ‘it’s just old age’ and I said, ‘you’re only 38′”. At age 13, Steve was diagnosed with Familial Adenomatous Polyposis (FAP) – a rare, inherited condition caused by a gene mutation which leads to hundreds of precancerous colon polyps.
These significantly increase the risk of developing rectal cancer by adulthood, but as a child, Steve underwent surgery to remove part of his rectum. Bethan, who was with Steve for almost five years before the pair split and remained best pals, said the news of his terminal diagnosis decades was “a massive shock for everyone.”
She explained: “It started off as something seemingly innocent as back pain so I’d never assume this would be the outcome. The back pain turned out to be tumours pressing down on his nerves.
Bethan and Steve co-parented their daughter Briannah(Image: Kennedy News and Media)
“He was devastated, and he phoned me, and he was crying his eyes out, he was really scared. Once the initial diagnosis had sunk in, he was very much like ‘I’m going to fight this and we’re going to do this’.
Once they said it was on his liver, he did know it was serious and that it would take him, but we just didn’t have a clue how soon. It completely ravaged his body before anybody could take it in, and it took us all by surprise.”
Bethan and Steve co-parented their seven-year-old daughter Briannah, as well as Bethan’s two elder children. She has since launched a GoFundMe page to cover the costs of Steve’s funeral, and to give him “the proper send-off he deserves”.