Anisha Patel spends her life trying to make people better. But when the young Surrey GP received a bad diagnosis of her own, she knew she had to share her experience. Jane McGowan listens in...
Dr Anisha Patel is a GP, author and TV personality – and also a cancer survivor. When I spoke to the Dorking-based mother-of-two, she had just marked the seven-year anniversary of her diagnosis with a poignant post on Instagram.
“Yes, it’s my ‘cancerversary’, as I call it, so I wanted to mark the day with a message for anyone facing their own diagnosis or worrying about symptoms,” she says. “I wasn’t expecting to feel that emotional, but it was a big day.”
Like so many people, Anisha initially put her symptoms down to stress. Although she had suffered intermittent bouts of constipation, her own well-being was swallowed up in trying to balance work with caring for her children, who were then aged six and seven.
“Gradually, I started to feel ill. There was a little bit of blood and I was very, very tired. I had also begun to lose weight. My husband is a bowel cancer specialis,t and he insisted that I go to see the GP,” she recalls.
Anisha was diagnosed with stage 3B rectal cancer. At just 39, it came as quite a shock, and she knew at once that she wanted to help raise awareness, especially among younger people. Three weeks late,r she set up an Instagram page: Doctors Get Cancer Too.
“My husband has been banging on for years about how more and more young people are getting bowel cancer. We both wanted to turn our negative into a positive, and so I decided to share my experience.
“I actually found writing really cathartic, so that it ended up being part of my therapy. I didn’t post every day or update stories, but the site was there documenting my experience and hopefully giving support to others.
“Yes, I am a doctor, but I don’t have all the answers. I wanted to find out as much as I could and share it with people not just as a professional, but as someone in the same boat.”
Anisha’s journey coincided with that of Dame Deborah James, the former Woking resident and much-lauded cancer awareness campaigner. Although she sadly passed away in 2022, Dame Deborah’s Bowelbabe charity has gone on to raise more than £11m for cutting-edge research into early detection and personalised medicine.
“Thanks to her, people were finally talking about bowel cancer. And because I had documented my own experience online, people suggested that I write a book,” explains Anisha.
Everything You Hoped You’d Never Need to Know about Bowel Cancer was published in 2023. In it Anisha talks not only about the illness itself, but also of its effects on carers and loved ones.
“The second half covers the thing I’ve struggled with the most, and for which there are no real services in the UK: life after cancer. If you’re young, you want to go back to work, you want to have sex, you want to start where you left off. But you can’t because there is so much to deal with – physically and emotionally.
“Your mates won’t remember the date of your first colonoscopy, for example – and anyway, you don’t want people’s diaries to be full of your past appointment milestones. But for me, it’s important to mark them.
“You have to put your life back together. That means everything from having your first bath to telling friends you can’t have a late dinner as you will be on the toilet all night.”
Six years clear of her cancer, Anisha remains determined to ensure that others have the same opportunity.
“At stage 3B, my cancer was pretty advanced, but I managed to get through it,” she reflects. “I am still in remission, which allows me to work as a GP and to keep on raising awareness.”
When diagnosed, says Anisha, the hardest part was still trying to be a mum.
“The children were my number one concern. But you soon realise you need to put your own life jacket on before you can do anything else.
“They’ve been brilliant. I mean, they are the children of medics and we’re really open with them. It’s a bit of a running joke that we tend to overshare, but I rather like that. We’ve shown them that, although it was a really bad time, we have come through as a family and done some amazing things as a result.”
Everything You Hoped You’d Never Need to Know about Bowel Cancer (£18.99) is available from local bookshops or via the website: dranisha.co.uk
