PelvEx 2024

A young surgeon’s experience as a patient with bowel cancer

If you ask any clinician, becoming a patient is an unusual experience. When you couple that with the naivety of youth, embracing the role of a patient is particularly challenging. 

As part of surgical training, and even in medical school, there are specific red flags that are taught to all of us. ‘Bowel habit change’ and ‘per rectal bleeding’ are not a great combination. We are also taught that we when we hear hoof beats, we should think horses, not zebras. So when I developed these symptoms I just assumed that I probably had a benign cause of bleeding. I assumed this for six weeks while I worked in a high volume liver and kidney transplant unit until I decided it was bothersome. I picked up the phone to one of my mentors, a colorectal surgeon. She subsequently performed my low anterior resection.

James Ashcroft (@JamesAshcroftMD) Academic Clinical Fellow, Department of Surgery, Cambridge, UK;

Salomone Di Saverio (@salo75) Consultant General and Colorectal Surgeon, Professor of Surgery, University of Insubria, Regione Lombardia, Italy;

Justin Davies (@jdcamcolorectal) Consultant General and Colorectal Surgeon and Deputy Medical Director, Addenbrooke’s Hospital, Cambridge, UK.