Aged just 27, and a mother-of-two, having colon cancer was the last thing on Bronwyn Tagg’s mind – especially as she had just given birth to a healthy baby boy.
Bronwyn booked an appointment with her GP after passing a worrying amount of blood when going to the toilet.
Her doctor diagnosed her with piles – a very common condition after birth – without taking the time to examine her.
Then at the start of 2024, Bronwyn, a dental nurse, began to experience diarrhoea combined with stomach pains that left her ‘barreled over’, unable to move.
The busy mother-of-two went back to her GP who sent her for an ultrasound, to see if the pain was being caused by a burst ovary, or ovarian cancer.
But the tests came back clear. Eventually, in February 2025, she was referred to a gynaecologist who ordered an MRI to rule out endometriosis.
Results revealed a 40mm lesion in her rectum. Two weeks later, in May 2025, she was diagnosed with colon cancer.
‘I feel like if the doctor had taken the time to examine me in the first place, then I would have been diagnosed earlier,’ she says. ‘I’m angry, but I can’t dwell on it.’
Bronwyn believes that if her doctor took the time to examine her when she first presented with symptoms, her disease could have been caught a lot earlier
Bronwyn, from Cambridge, received the life-changing phone call following a colonoscopy – where doctors removed the entire growth, known as a polyp – whilst she was shopping.
‘They asked me to come in the following day for my results and to bring someone for support. ‘I instantly knew it was bad news,’ she recalled.
‘I felt so numb doing the rest of my shopping, my 18-month-old sat in the trolley, just thinking “What am I going to do?”.’
The next day the couple were handed the devastating news: the polyp the doctors removed was cancerous.
‘The rest of the appointment was a complete blur, I didn’t take anything in,’ Bronywn said. ‘I had no questions at that time, my husband was next to me in tears but I just felt nothing.
She bravely elected to undergo surgery to remove part of her rectum – the final few inches of the large intestine – and have a stoma fitted.
This involves having part of the colon brought through an opening in the stomach, so part of your colon is on the outside of your body.
This is done when there is not enough bowel left to join the healthy intestine to the anus, or if the two ends of the bowel cannot be joined together.
Bronwyn had just given brth to her son Austin, now 2, when she started experiencing symptoms
She eventually underwent an MRI and a colonoscopy which revealed a 40mm cancerous growth on her bowel
Stool then passes out of the colostomy into a sealed bag outside the body.
‘A consultant put it very bluntly and said that this will have already knocked a few years off my life,’ she remembers.
Six weeks later came more devastating news.
A quarter of the lymph nodes removed during surgery tested positive, meaning her cancer had spread.
She then underwent chemotherapy to lower the chance of the cancer coming back – all the while continuing to care for her young children, who are now two and five years old.
She said: ‘Chemotherapy was a lot more mentally challenging than it was physically.
‘I struggled with exhaustion, nausea, and nerve pain and I found it so hard hyping myself up to go in for treatment that I knew was going to make me feel rubbish.
‘But it also made being a mum really hard. Josie started school in September, and I started chemotherapy the week after.’
Brownyn said the hardest part about her diagnosis was telling her children
The couple also had no choice but for Glen to continue working to financially support the family – with the added help of family and friends.
But one of the hardest parts was explaining her disease to her five-year-old daughter.
‘We tried not to convey that we were scared,’ she said.
‘We started off my telling her I needed an operation to remove something that wasn’t very nice from mummy’s belly.
‘When I woke up with a stoma, I really wasn’t sure how she was going to take it.’
Bronwyn was given a children’s book by the nurses at the hospital that helped explain what a stoma was to her daughter.
‘She was very unsure at first, asked all sorts of curious questions as any five-year-old would like “Does it hurt? Why do you have a bag? Why does it look like that?”,’ she remembers.
‘And I was just really honest with her. I change and empty my bag in front of her and will shower with her in the room.
‘I think it’s good for her to realise not all bodies look the same and that’s ok.
‘I only recently told her that I had cancer. I think I really wanted to protect her to begin with, but really its about being open and honest with your children.’
Bronwyn has now completed chemotherapy and is awaiting results from a recent scan to determine whether she is in remission.
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‘I’m really hopeful that we’re done but I know that we won’t ever go back to how life was before. It’s a new normal,’ she said.
‘A normal where we now understand just how fragile life is. I don’t sweat the small stuff anymore.’
She added: ‘With the recent passing of Mel Schilling [who was diagnosed with bowel cancer before the disease spread to her brain] I know that being in remission doesn’t always mean it’s done and finished.
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‘I think this whole crazy year has taught me to value my own time, to be a bit more selfish, say no to things I don’t want to waste my energy with and to say yes to everything that excites me.
She added: ‘For anyone noticing any symptoms, I would say go and get them checked with the GP.
‘If you are disregarded because of your age, you need to persist. Early diagnosis saves lives.’
Along with other cancers that start in the bowel and colon, rectal – also known as colorectal cancer – kills 17,000 people in the UK every year.
It is typically diagnosed at late stage, when treatment is difficult, because it causes few symptoms early on – which are often mistaken for less serious problems such as piles, irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) or even period pain.
Cancer Research UK estimates that more than half (54 per cent) of bowel cancer cases in the UK are preventable.
