‘Telling my children I had cancer at 39 was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do’

When I watched the video of the Princess of Wales revealing her cancer diagnosis, explaining how it had taken her and Prince William time to explain things to their three young children in a way they understood, my heart went out to her. And my mind went back to the painful day when I had to tell my own children the same thing.

It was 2018 and I was a busy NHS GP, my husband was a consultant gastroenterologist and we had two young children, aged six and seven.

Life was hectic, and so despite our jobs my husband and I weren’t overly concerned about the fact that I had started to feel more tired than usual, or that I had some blood in my stool, which I put down to piles. When you’re juggling work with parenting, it’s easy to dismiss things. Doctors also tend to take their health for granted. And I was both. 

But, like the Princess, I was young and fit. I was 39, rarely ate red meat, didn’t smoke and exercised several times a week. Apart from some niggling tummy trouble and tiredness, I was fit and well. Or so I thought.

After a family holiday in Italy where I ate pasta every day, I began to lose weight, so when I got home I saw my GP, thinking it might be irritable bowel syndrome (IBS). My husband, at the time one of the regional leads for the UK’s National Bowel Cancer Screening Programme, thought it might be inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). (This is different to IBS though the symptoms may be similar – the main types of IBD are Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis.)

It was neither. Two weeks later, a colonoscopy revealed a dark, bloody, mass – I had stage 3 bowel cancer. I had been suffering from lower back pain and I had to wait four days to find out if it had spread to my spine, which thankfully it hadn’t.

Telling my children I had cancer was the hardest thing I have ever had to do. It was heartbreaking and it went against all my instincts as a mum who wanted to protect them. I felt like I was destroying their happy, safe bubble. Cancer was like a tsunami sweeping through our family unit, wreaking havoc.

My husband and I decided to tell them the truth early on – they knew something was wrong from the moment of my diagnosis, as the phone rang non-stop and my mother had suddenly arrived. They needed to know why, rather than overhearing the hushed, frightened whispers of the adults around them.

I was so glad to hear, in her video, that the Princess of Wales – who hasn’t disclosed what type of cancer she has – had also told her youngest son, Louis, who is five, the same age as my youngest when I was diagnosed. Even very young children pick up on things, and can conjure up scary scenarios in their little minds. By being open and honest, in simple, age-appropriate language, they feel safer.

One of the hardest things was balancing the urge to protect my children with the uncertainty I was still feeling. I didn’t know what our future held, so how could I tell them? But, like the Princess is probably feeling, I felt my first job was to carry on as a mother and that meant keeping life as normal as possible. Or the new normal we found ourselves in. So I put my make-up on and went to my brother-in-law’s 40^th soon after I was diagnosed.

When we had told our children, one simply asked what was for breakfast while the other looked blank-faced and didn’t seem to take it in. But the following day, when we arrived at my brother-in-law’s party, they blurted out, “Mummy has cancer” when he opened the door. 

I worried about my mum, my dad, my husband and my friends. Seeing what my diagnosis was doing to them broke my heart. My mum wanted to stay and look after me when I was really sick, but I didn’t let her because no mother should see their child at their lowest ebb.

My heart goes out to Prince William too. He has a tough role, just as my husband did.

One of the other challenges for me was the loss of control. I was used to steering the ship at home and, as a doctor, the transition from carer to patient was very hard, too. During chemotherapy, I was bed-bound for week one, up and pottering gently for week two, and when I felt OK in week three I planned fun things for the kids to do, before going back to being bed-bound – and so it continued.

After one operation, I dragged myself out of bed the following week and took the children trick-or-treating for Hallowe’en. I could only make it to the end of our road before I had to turn back, but it was worth it – as was getting myself out of bed for their nativity plays.

Every ounce of spare energy I had went on the children. I imagine the Princess is doing the same.

Life after cancer is hard to navigate. The cancer community doesn’t like to compare it to a war – there is no winning or losing a battle, we’re all just doing our best. But, just as soldiers who come home from war often fall apart, for me, coming out the other side of cancer treatment posed its own set of challenges.

I had nightmares about the cancer coming back and I kept getting triggered by things at work, which made being a doctor hard. Eventually I was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder.

I had scans every six months until last October – and “scanxiety”, as it’s called, is a real thing. My mind would go into very dark places, but with the help of my therapist I learnt to compartmentalise those feelings. I also distracted myself with fun things.

Today, because I’m alive I feel an urgency to my life, a need to make memories with my children because I know how suddenly life can shift.

My son, who is now 12, wanted to talk to me about the Princess of Wales’s diagnosis when the news broke on Friday. He remarked on how hard it is for people who haven’t been through a parent’s diagnosis to know how it feels, but he also said: “You know what, Mum, your cancer wasn’t all bad, was it?” And I’m so glad he saw it like that.

My children have seen me cry, and I feel guilty about that, but they’ve also seen me laugh and get up and be strong. And I’ve no doubt, judging by her video, that the Princess of Wales will do that too: be strong and carry on.

Everything You Hoped You’d Never Need To Know About Bowel Cancer, by Dr Anisha Patel is out now (£16.99, John Murray)

As told to Maria Lally