WATCH: Highlands and Islands MSP Edward Mountain shares powerful personal message of his own cancer treatment to raise awareness of Bowel Cancer Awareness Month
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A Highlands and Islands MSP has shared his own personal experiences of his ongoing bowel cancer treatment.
Edward Mountain has posted a video on social media in order to raise awareness for Bowel Cancer Awareness Month.
He revealed that he had been receiving treatment for bowel cancer over the last twelve months and is looking forward to completing treatment next month.
The MSP is encouraging people who identify symptoms to visit their doctor as soon as possible.
Around 43,000 people each year are diagnosed with bowel cancer, according to Bowel Cancer UK.
The organisation’s website states: “Nearly everyone survives bowel cancer if diagnosed at the earliest stage. However this drops significantly as the disease develops. Early diagnosis really does save lives.”
In his video Mr Mountain said: “I just need a few moments of your time to talk about Bowel Cancer Awareness Month. It’s really important you listen.
“Sometime in your life you will be sent the ‘poo sticks’ as I call them. Make sure you use them, they are really simple and they are a really good way of detecting bowel cancer early.
“There are other symptoms that you can have like blood in your poo, which is what I had, a change in your bowel habits, tiredness, unexplained weight loss and also a lump in your tummy.
“It’s really important that if you identify any of those symptoms you go and see your doctor, because if you catch this early it can be treatable as I found out.
“During the last year I have undertaken radiotherapy, chemotherapy and I’ve had surgery to remove the area where the bowel cancer was. I’ve still got a little bit more to do and should be clear of this by the end of May, which is really exciting.
“But you can avoid all of this if you follow the simple instructions and find the symptoms early, and that way you can avoid the unpleasantness of radiotherapy and chemotherapy, because bowel cancer will be dealt with before it becomes a problem.”
