Don't be anal - get arsey!

While I was at the gym last week one of the TV’s that morning was screening the breakfast news programme, ‘Lorraine’, and one of the presenter’s guests was the actress and ‘Loose Women’ panellist, Lynda Bellingham, who was talking about her battle with colon cancer, commenting that she had decided not to brave any more chemotherapy treatment as it was so debilitating; she had accepted that the end of her life was approaching and was I guess preparing herself for it.  She talked very openly and honestly about her disease and about dying, hoping that she would survive long enough to spend one last Christmas with her family.  So I was shocked to hear yesterday that she had sadly passed away so soon.  She was a familiar face on our TV screens, and I will always remember seeing her in those oxo adverts when I was a kid, playing ‘everybody’s mum’.  Later on that day, a few commentators on other news programmes when paying tribute to Lynda discussed bowel cancer, and how if it is spotted and diagnosed early there is a good chance of surviving it; but as it is associated with an area of the body that we are somewhat squeamish of discussing, its symptoms are still sadly left too late for some people to be able to survive.  It’s because it’s our anus, our arse, and it’s associated with going to the toilet and with shitting and as a society we are still too (pardon the pun) ‘anal’ to discuss it and to go to the doctor with our worries before the physical implications of those worries becomes something too substantial to ignore any longer.  Well I had to really battle to get my treatment, and for the medical services to take my case seriously, but if I hadn’t, well I just wouldn’t be here.  So when symptoms of bowel cancer present, however unsure you are, my advice is – ‘don’t be anal, get arsey!’  Might be a useful phrase for the campaign?