'Fit and healthy' dad, 31, warns against ‘silent' symptoms of ‘great, big, ominous’ cancer
Warning: This article contains discussion of cancer which some readers may find distressing
A father-of-three has opened up about the 'silent' symptoms he initially brushed off before being diagnosed with stage two bowel cancer at 31.
Chris Kirt, a cloud engineer from Northamptonshire, said the first warning sign was in summer 2024 when he noticed 'a little bit of bright red blood' after going to the toilet.
“It was the tiniest bit. It was so insignificant, but it never happened to me before,” the young dad, who would go to the gym several times a week, tells LADbible.
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“You Google it, right? You talk yourself out of it. So I didn’t go to doctors.”
Over the following weeks he kept getting blood in his stool to the point that 'it was almost like what a woman would typically lose on her period. It was kind of that sort of bleeding'.
After eventually going to the doctors, initial checks didn't raise any alarm bells.
“They originally did a full blood test, and it all came back normal,” he recalls. “They just said it would be piles.
“But I said, 'I’m not satisfied with what you’re telling me because you’ve not seen or felt what’s causing the bleeding'.”
After taking a FIT test - a screening tool for bowel cancer that detects tiny traces of hidden blood in your stool - Chris was referred for further investigation.
It was around the same time he travelled to Rome to propose to his partner.
“I proposed to her on day one of getting there in the evening, and it was amazing. She said, 'Yes'."
The next day, however, his symptoms became frightening: “And then the next day, you know, we’re drinking heavy. I don’t really drink. I’m drinking heavy and things. And the next day, I’m just losing a tremendous amount of blood.
“My stools were basically just black and full of red blood.”
Back in the UK, Chris underwent a colonoscopy and noticed something on the screen that made him panic.
“And I just saw this great, big, ominous tumour, which was just awful looking,” he remembers.
“As soon as I saw it, I panicked. I tried to get up, and I said 'that’s cancer'.”
Staff told him at that moment that they were '99 percent sure this is cancer, but can’t say until the biopsy’s come back'.
On how difficult it was telling his partner, Chris says: “So I walk into this waiting room and I just shook my head, and she just broke down.
“To add to all this, we we just had a little girl who was three months old at the time, and I got two other kids.”
Chris was set to undergo his first scheduled operation to remove the cancer in November but it was unexpectedly called off because his surgeon was unwell.
“And then I had the robotic operation,” he explains.
And by December, Chris got the news he was in remission.
“The very end of it all was the cancer had not spread. It had not spread anywhere else. So I’m good. I’m in remission,” he says.
“They took a third of my bowel out and stitched it together, and I have had no issues toileting afterwards. It’s actually better than what it was because I’m more consistent and better now.”
Now aged 33, Chris has reflected on the silent symptoms he ignored in the lead up to his diagnosis:
Night sweats
“The first symptom I acknowledged, to be honest, was this tremendous amount of night sweats,” Chris recalls.
He said he would wake up 'soaked from head to toe like I’ve been in a swimming pool' and that 'the bed was wet'.
Bowel habit changes
“I had, like, Mr Whippy ice cream consistency stools that were never solid, but they were never loose,” Chris says, followed by 'really hard nugget kind of stools or fragmented stools'.
Tiredness
“I’d get in, sit on the sofa, and I’d just knock out,” he adds. “It’s not normal… that was chronic fatigue.”
Stomach and chest pain
He also remembers a frightening episode before diagnosis: “I had this immense abdominal pain, my chest was hurting, I thought I was having a heart attack… so I banged 999,” later believing 'that was a partial blockage'.
Chris says: “My lymph nodes in my neck were constantly raised, and now I’ve never had to go up since after the surgery, which is crazy.”
As well as spreading awareness of bowel cancer symptoms on his TikTok page (@official_chriskirt), Chris has also launched a cancer kit through his website.
The kit is designed to help people prepare for GP appointments and push for investigations if they are worried about symptoms.
Notably, many symptoms of bowel cancer overlap with non-life threatening conditions IBS and IBD (colitis/Crohn’s).
“I think the biggest thing is mentioning how silent this thing is," he adds. "You’ve gotta be aware of your symptoms.
“I run more. I eat better. I quit red meat. I don’t smoke. Don’t drink. I don’t vape. I quit all of that because I’m constantly worried that it’s gonna come back.”
If you’ve been affected by any of these issues and want to speak to someone in confidence, contact Macmillan’s Cancer Support Line on 0808 808 00 00, 8am–8pm seven days a week.
Topics: Cancer, Bowel cancer, Health
Anish Vij