In September 2024, we first began to sense that something wasn’t right.

Mike was experiencing a range of symptoms constipation, diarrhea, rectal bleeding, and difficulty fully passing stools. We went back and forth to doctors, completed countless blood tests and stool tests, and still had no answers. It wasn’t until a different doctor finally took a closer look that Mike was urgently referred for a colonoscopy.

On 17th December, biopsies were taken, but the results came back inconclusive. A second sigmoidoscopy was arranged for 6th January 2025, during which they took 16 biopsies.

Then, on 23rd January, our world shattered: the results confirmed it was bowel cancer.

Mike underwent a bowel resection that same month. Complications followed, where he had a leak, so emergency surgery, and life-threatening sepsis. After that came six relentless months of chemotherapy. Every two weeks, he pushed himself into what can only be described as hell, and it’s something neither of us will ever forget.

Even before finishing chemo, the cancer returned. Faster, more aggressive, and back in his bowel. The worst blow was learning it had spread to the peritoneum, the thin membrane lining the abdomen. Peritoneal cancer is extremely difficult to treat and requires a specialist procedure called HIPEC, carried out only by expert surgeons.

On Wednesday 26th November, we were told there was nothing more they could offer except palliative chemotherapy.

Time stopped.

But we are not giving up.

We have been told by our surgeon that she believes Mike’s cancer is resectable and that he is still young, fit, and strong enough to undergo and recover from major surgery. HIPEC and Cytoreductive surgery could give him a real chance of him seeing our girls grow up.

Because it isn’t available to him through the current NHS system, we are trying to fund the HIPEC and CRS procedure privately and we desperately need help to make this possible.

We need this for our girls to have their Daddy, its the worst part of this journey protecting them from this hell. He should be there to watch them grow, they need their Daddy, I need their Daddy.