Ciara McGeehan

look at the next stage.

Now, I am being treated in the NHS up at home and it's fantastic care.

People can say what they like about the NHS and the waitlist, but whenever you're on a cancer pathway, everything happens very quickly.

But I'm also well aware that there's other expertise elsewhere.

And rather interestingly, I jumped on a like group call.

I hadn't seeked any

help from support groups before, but I received my immunotherapy through a private company because it wasn't available on the NHS.

It is now, thankfully, but for my first 12 rounds, it wasn't available.

So I had that through a company called Ciancis and the nurses there were lovely and fantastic and they created a bowel cancer support group.

And I was like, I've got amazing support around me.

I've got my friends and family and I'm a big talker.

So I kind of felt like I'd already burdened all of them enough and they're like, they've taken it.

And I kind of didn't feel like I needed any help.

I feel like I'm coping with it pretty well.

But anyway, whatever.

It was on a Tuesday and literally like two or three minutes to 11.

I was bored sitting in my front room and I was like, I should look at that.

that call's on I'll jump on it see what I'm so glad I did I jumped on that call and a lovely lady from Scotland shared her experience of stage 4 bowel cancer and that she was diagnosed in 2016 and I was like quick maths yeah that's a long time

good 10 years I was like okay and I got a bit emotional listening to it and I thanked her for sharing her experience and I said that I've been diagnosed in May of last year that at Christmas I was told surgery and radio weren't an option and so there realistically going forward it's only

treatments like chemo and immunotherapy and maybe other things like that um in my path and felt very aware that like this is not going to be a curative path for me that it's just going to prolong my life and she shared that at prognosis she was given six to twelve months and was told the exact same thing surgery wasn't an option and then she saw a second opinion so for me that was um