{"id":178366,"date":"2025-09-24T10:48:08","date_gmt":"2025-09-24T10:48:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/178366\/"},"modified":"2025-09-24T10:48:08","modified_gmt":"2025-09-24T10:48:08","slug":"bowel-cancer-man-initially-thought-he-had-food-poisoning-but-it-turned-out-to-be-a-4-inch-tumor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/178366\/","title":{"rendered":"Bowel cancer: Man initially thought he had food poisoning, but it turned out to be a 4-inch tumor |"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Bowel At just 36, Mathew Duggan thought stomach troubles were nothing more than food poisoning. Instead, doctors found a four-inch cancerous tumor in his bowel, a diagnosis that upended his life, family, and daily routine.Signs you don\u2019t need Vitamin D supplements but are taking them anyway<\/a>Colorectal cancer: What the American Cancer Society says about screening, early symptoms and preventive measures<\/a>Duggan, who lives in Tasmania with his wife and young daughter, told the Daily Mail he first noticed a change in his bowel habits in February 2024. \u201cI thought it would just go away,\u201d he said, recalling how diarrhea lingered for nearly a month. \u201cThen I started to feel pain, and eventually I noticed blood in my stool. That’s when I finally called the doctor.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cancer is curable if detected early: Signs to pay attention to<\/p>\n

At first, his doctor dismissed the symptoms. \u201cBecause of my age, I was told it would probably just be hemorrhoids or polyps. Cancer wasn’t on the radar,” Duggan said. But a colonoscopy soon revealed the devastating truth: a large tumor in his bowel. \u201cAt 36, you’re focused on work, family, your little girl. Cancer just doesn’t cross your mind,\u201d he told the outlet.\"2\"Surgery followed in May 2024, and Duggan then endured six months of chemotherapy. He described the neuropathy from treatment as unbearable. \u201cThe neuropathy in my feet got so bad that there were times I wanted to cut both my legs off. It felt like someone stabbing the bottoms of my feet constantly, pins and needles, burning, just unbearable pain. I couldn’t walk from the bed to the fridge. Some days I couldn’t go to work. It was the worst pain of my life.\u201dThe young father and his wife chose not to tell their three-year-old daughter about the diagnosis. \u201cShe didn’t come with me to the hospital or see me during chemo. We didn’t want to expose her to it,\u201d he explained. Instead, he focused on protecting her from the darker realities of treatment.”She only knows the positive now, the fundraising we’ve done, the support we’ve had from the community. She’s been my biggest little supporter without even knowing what I was going through.”Duggan also decided to keep his cancer largely private. \u201cI didn’t want my life to change. I didn’t want people coming up to me all the time, asking how I was, looking at me differently because I had cancer. I just wanted to get on with treatment quietly and try to keep things normal.\u201d Support groups eventually gave him space to share. “It was a relief to finally see I wasn’t the only one. That helped lift a weight off my shoulders.\u201dNow in recovery, Duggan has turned his ordeal into advocacy. \u201cYour body tells you when something’s wrong. Don’t wait. Don’t let anyone dismiss it because of your age. If I had ignored it any longer, it could have been too late,\u201d he told the Daily Mail.\"3\"In May, he ran more than 300 miles across 12 days for a \u201cDo It For Cancer\u201d fundraising campaign. On his fundraising page, Duggan wrote: \u201cI\u2019m wanting to create awareness around bowel cancer, especially in young people, as every health professional I\u2019ve seen across my journey told me that I\u2019m too young to have [it]. I want to make young people aware of the symptoms and to get checked as early as possible to stop young people dying from this disease.\u201dHis message comes as researchers warn of a troubling trend. According to the Cancer Research Institute, colorectal cancer rates are rising among younger adults. Today, one in five new diagnoses is in people under 55. Since the mid-1990s, cases among those aged 20\u201339 have increased by about 2% each year.Experts suggest lifestyle changes, including more sedentary habits and higher consumption of processed foods and red meat, are driving the surge.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"At just 36, Mathew Duggan thought stomach troubles were nothing more than food poisoning. Instead, doctors found a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":178367,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[51969,106029,59984,21874,97,51972,106028],"class_list":["post-178366","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-bowel-cancer","tag-cancer-advocacy","tag-cancer-diagnosis","tag-colorectal-cancer","tag-health","tag-symptoms-of-bowel-cancer","tag-young-adults-cancer-rates"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178366","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=178366"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178366\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/178367"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=178366"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=178366"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=178366"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}