Every year more than 17,000 people die as a result of bowel cancer yet if caught early enough nine in 10 survive
A former television star is urging people not to “be too embarrassed” when discussing symptoms after losing her father to bowel cancer at just 62. Zahida Allen, who featured in the Newcastle-based reality programme Geordie Shore and took part in series six of Ex on the Beach, revealed how her dad, Anhar Miah, was repeatedly dismissed by his doctor and given laxatives.
She explained that from January 2021 onwards, he made numerous visits to his GP seeking help for his stomach complaints which included diarrhoea, constipation lasting up to a week, and abdominal pain, yet he was consistently sent away with laxatives instead of being referred for additional tests. He even attended A&E in December 2021, after experiencing rapid weight loss, severe exhaustion, deteriorating bowel problems and blood in his stool and vomit, only to be discharged with a box of laxatives.
Following Zahida’s persistence, a subsequent X-ray and CT scan uncovered a bowel obstruction, with a biopsy resulting in a diagnosis of incurable, inoperable stage four metastatic bowel cancer in February 2022. He passed away a year later in February 2023.
Zahida, now 32 and living in Newcastle, believes that had her father’s symptoms been treated with greater urgency and testing for bowel cancer carried out earlier, more could have been done to extend, or even save, his life. Speaking to PA Real Life, she said: “If I didn’t say something, if I didn’t refuse to leave, still we wouldn’t have known at that time that my dad had cancer, and it would have continued developing.
“And I think that is what the problem is. When my dad got misdiagnosed those other three times, the cancer was very much present, and it was multiplying, and it was growing. If he was able to find it sooner, we would have been able to look at other treatment ideas or plans sooner.”
She added: “We didn’t have the chance to look at anything. We were just told, ‘Your dad is going to die’.”
Zahida revealed her father had suffered digestive problems for years, though these were consistently attributed to his rich diet. By 2021, however, his condition had deteriorated significantly, with severe fatigue, rapid weight loss and bouts of constipation lasting up to seven days.
Article continues below
He also discovered blood in his stool. She said he visited his GP on numerous occasions, only to be sent away with laxatives that failed to alleviate his symptoms.
In the UK, there are between 46,000 and 49,000 cases of bowel cancer every year. This is the equivalent of someone receiving a diagnosis every 12 minutes and is the fourth most common cause of cancer in the country.
Every year, around 17,700 people die as a result of the disease, yet if caught early enough, up to 90% of people survive. According to the NHS, the main symptoms of bowel cancer include:
- changes in your poo, such as having softer poo, diarrhoea or constipation that is not usual for you
- needing to poo more or less often than usual for you
- blood in your poo, which may look red or black
- bleeding from your bottom
- often feeling like you need to poo, even if you’ve just been to the toilet
- tummy pain
- a lump in your tummy
- bloating
- losing weight without trying
- feeling very tired or short of breath – these are signs of anaemia, which can be caused by bowel cancer
It was during a visit to her family in Newcastle in December 2021 that Zahida noticed her father appeared gravely unwell. She said: “His eyeballs were a different colour, he looked ill, he looked skinny, his bones were sticking out. I’d never seen him like that before.
“He’d always been quite a healthy man, very active, liked swimming and running and walking, he had loads of different jobs, so for me to see him frail was really difficult.”
One day in December 2021, Anhar went to lie down for a nap but “wasn’t waking up for ages”. When Zahida went to check on him, she discovered him vomiting blood and immediately called an ambulance, which rushed him to A&E.
It was a hectic Friday evening, and Zahida and Anhar spent the entire night waiting to be seen — yet she recounted how he was discharged following a brief consultation and handed yet another box of laxatives. Determined to seek further advice, Zahida pushed for a second opinion, and a different doctor referred him for an X-ray and subsequently a CT scan.
The CT scan revealed his bowel was twisted and blocked, and Anhar was informed he required emergency surgery that same night. Following the operation, Zahida said she questioned the doctors about whether his symptoms could be indicative of bowel cancer, but was told that while they did not believe this to be the case, they would send a sample away for testing.
“I had a really bad feeling,” she said. Zahida recalled that it was not until February 2022 that Anhar received a phone call with his biopsy results, and she remembers being told that he had “stage four metastatic, incurable, inoperable, terminal bowel cancer”, which had spread to his abdomen, kidney and stomach.
She said: “By that point, it was just so far gone.”
Anhar was offered chemotherapy, which doctors hoped would extend his life by three to five years, and he embarked on a gruelling schedule in which he would attend hospital every fortnight for nine hours of chemotherapy, before returning home with a port to continue treatment for a further 48 hours.
Yet Zahida said: “I think there was only one time where my dad managed two weeks at home without going to hospital. Every other time he had serious infections.”
This included grade three sepsis on one occasion when he came close to losing his life. She added: “And he’d get complete obstruction down there, and then they would say we’ll have to do an enema, or he’d get ulcers in his mouth, that would pop and then infect the stomach… can’t eat anything, can’t drink anything, so he’d have to go to hospital and get fed through a tube.
“In a way, I’m glad we didn’t have three years of that or five years of that. That is no way for someone to live. There was no point in that.”
After starting chemotherapy in May 2022, Anhar died in February 2023, shortly after marking his 62nd birthday with his family around him. She stated: “Now I see that God took him sooner because that wasn’t life. He was in an insufferable, incomprehensible amount of pain.”
Today, Zahida is paying tribute to her father’s memory by assisting her family in running his restaurant – the Bay Leaf in Cramlington, Northumberland. She is also promoting awareness of bowel cancer symptoms and the significance of early testing.
She maintains that everyone should monitor their bowel health more carefully, championing new initiatives such as healthcare company Newfoundland’s bowel health testing kit, which can identify early indicators of bowel cancer – a resource which, she believes, might have enabled her dad to receive help sooner.
“My dad was a very proud person. For him to have to talk to me about it, or me have to go to the hospital, it was mortifying for him. He found it humiliating… it shouldn’t be embarrassing because it’s a health problem,” she stated.
“I hope with my message and with my dad’s story, more people have a quick look at their symptoms and just take the test and take matters into their own hands. I wish we were taught more about bowel health and what is normal and what isn’t,” she continued.
“If I’d known the symptoms to look out for, and known there were opportunities to self-test earlier, I genuinely believe that could have helped my dad.”
Zahida Allen has teamed up with Newfoundland Diagnostics to launch the “Know Your Sh! t” campaign, aiming to get more people talking about their bowel health, with beer mats and complimentary bowel health tests being made available in pubs throughout London. For further information, visit www.newfoundland.io..