Gerard Rennick (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Last week I met with a constituent, Rachel Bernardo, a mother of three from Deception Bay who was diagnosed with stage 3 bowel cancer. Twelve months prior to her diagnosis she went to her GP with stomach pains, which were dismissed as constipation. One year on, she went to the Redcliffe emergency department with stomach pains and severe bloating. They found a tumour, which she had removed from her bowel, along with 20 cancerous lymph nodes, followed by six months of intensive chemotherapy. Prior to her diagnosis, she was fit and healthy with no noticeable symptoms besides tiredness, which was put down to having young children.

Rachel continues to advocate for early onset bowel cancer, with one in 10 Australians under the age of 50 being diagnosed. Bowel cancer is the deadliest cancer for Australians aged between 25 and 45, which is why early detection is so important. More needs to be done to shed the perception that bowel cancer is an old person's disease. Rachel continues to push for lowering the screening age from 50 to 45 and closing the care gap with more support for younger bowel cancer sufferers, and dedicated bowel care nurses and rapid referrals. All these things could have made a difference in her situation, which may have looked very different if she had been asked the right questions and been taken seriously in the first place.

Too many young people are having to advocate for their own health care and wait far too long to be seen. It's time our healthcare system took bowel cancer in young people much more seriously.