Dismissed as piles: Fit 31-year-old warns against ‘silent’ cancer symptoms after ‘big, ominous’ tumour found |
Warning: This article contains discussion of cancer which some readers may find distressing. A father-of-three who was diagnosed with stage two bowel cancer at the age of 31 has spoken candidly about the early warning signs he initially dismissed, describing the disease as “great, big and ominous” precisely because of how quietly it developed. Chris Kirt, a cloud engineer from Northamptonshire, was training regularly at the gym and considered himself fit and healthy when he first noticed something was wrong in the summer of 2024.
The symptoms he brushed off
The first sign was blood after going to the toilet. “It was the tiniest bit. It was so insignificant, but it never happened to me before,” Chris told LADbible. “You Google it, right? You talk yourself out of it. So I didn’t go to doctors.” Over the following weeks, the bleeding continued and worsened. “It was almost like what a woman would typically lose on her period. It was kind of that sort of bleeding,” he said. When he eventually went to his GP, initial investigations offered reassurance rather than answers. “They originally did a full blood test, and it all came back normal,” Chris recalled. “They just said it would be piles. “But I said, ‘I’m not satisfied with what you’re telling me because you’ve not seen or felt what’s causing the bleeding’.” He was given a FIT test, a faecal immunochemical test used to detect traces of blood in stool, which led to further referral.
The moment everything changed
Around the same time, Chris travelled to Rome to propose to his partner. “I proposed to her on day one of getting there in the evening, and it was amazing. She said, ‘Yes’,” he said.
Chris’s diagnosis shocked his wife and three young children, adding emotional strain to an already stressful period/ Instagram
The following day, his symptoms escalated dramatically. “We’re drinking heavy. I don’t really drink. I’m drinking heavy and things. And the next day, I’m just losing a tremendous amount of blood. “My stools were basically just black and full of red blood.” Back in the UK, a colonoscopy confirmed what Chris feared the moment he saw the screen. “And I just saw this great, big, ominous tumour, which was just awful looking,” he said. “As soon as I saw it, I panicked. I tried to get up, and I said ‘that’s cancer’.” Medical staff told him they were “99 percent sure this is cancer”, pending biopsy results. Telling his partner was devastating. “So I walk into this waiting room and I just shook my head, and she just broke down,” he said. “To add to all this, we had just had a little girl who was three months old at the time, and I got two other kids.”
Treatment, remission and the warning he now shares
Chris was scheduled for surgery in November 2024, though his first operation was cancelled when his surgeon fell ill. He later underwent robotic surgery to remove the tumour. “They took a third of my bowel out and stitched it together,” he said. “I have had no issues toileting afterwards. It’s actually better than what it was.” By December, he was told the cancer had not spread and that he was in remission. “The very end of it all was the cancer had not spread. It had not spread anywhere else. So I’m good. I’m in remission.” Now aged 33, Chris is using his experience to raise awareness of what he calls bowel cancer’s “silent” symptoms, signs he believes are too often minimised, particularly in younger patients.As he looks back now, Chris can trace a pattern of symptoms that only made sense once the diagnosis came.The first thing he properly noticed was night sweats. He began waking drenched, not lightly overheated but soaked through. “I’d wake up soaked from head to toe like I’d been in a swimming pool,” he said, remembering how the bed itself would be wet. At the time, he didn’t connect it to anything serious.Fatigue followed. After work, he would sit down on the sofa and fall asleep almost immediately. “I’d get in, sit on the sofa, and I’d just knock out,” he said. For someone who trained regularly and considered himself fit, the exhaustion felt off, but not alarming enough to push him to act. “That wasn’t normal,” he said later. “That was chronic fatigue.”His bowel habits were also changing in ways that were easy to rationalise away. He never felt fully empty after using the toilet and noticed his stools fluctuating wildly, sometimes soft and almost melted, other times hard, fragmented and painful. It was inconsistent, uncomfortable, and persistent.Then there was the bleeding. At first, it appeared bright red. Later, darker and more alarming. He now knows that blood in stool can present in different ways depending on where the bleeding occurs, but at the time, it was just another symptom he hoped had a simpler explanation.One episode in particular still stands out. Before his diagnosis, Chris experienced sudden, severe abdominal pain that radiated into his chest. “I thought I was having a heart attack,” he said. He called 999, convinced something catastrophic was happening. Only later did he suspect it may have been caused by a partial blockage in his bowel. According to the NHS and Bowel Cancer UK, symptoms such as persistent bleeding, unexplained fatigue, night sweats, abdominal pain and changes in bowel habits should always be checked, even though they can overlap with conditions like IBS or haemorrhoids. Chris now shares his story on TikTok (@official_chriskirt) and has launched a cancer preparation kit designed to help people advocate for themselves in GP appointments. “I think the biggest thing is mentioning how silent this thing is,” he said. “You’ve gotta be aware of your symptoms.” Since treatment, he has overhauled his lifestyle. “I run more. I eat better. I quit red meat. I don’t smoke. Don’t drink. I don’t vape,” he said. “I quit all of that because I’m constantly worried that it’s gonna come back.” His message is not one of fear, but vigilance, especially for younger people who assume cancer is something that happens later, or to someone else.
