I always thought I was as strong as a horse

MY HEALTH EXPERIENCE: GERRY McLOUGHLIN:WHEN I got colon cancer, it was as if my world was imploding. But then, I'd turn on the TV and see hurricanes on the news and bodies floating. I said to myself, "How dare I complain". I had gotten away for 63-and-a-half years with no illness and I never knew the grief of losing a child.

Before I got sick, I always thought I was as strong as a horse. But towards the end of 2008, I found myself exhausted and having to go to bed in the afternoon. The real crux was discovering light rectal bleeding. I put it down to piles or having scratched myself while washing. I just happened to mention it to my doctor who’s a friend of mine. He said that any rectal bleeding had to be examined, no matter how slight.

He booked me into hospital for a colonoscopy. I had to take a drink to clear out my insides and it meant being beside a bathroom for hours. When I woke up from the general anaesthetic, I was told that I had a nasty tumour in my lower bowel that had burst through the colon. All the faecal matter was going through my insides and that was actually poisoning me. If I had been foolish enough not to get checked out, I would have died. It was as simple as that.

On Christmas Eve 2008, I had a colostomy. A plastic bag is attached to the wall of the stomach and all the waste faecal matter goes into it. When I woke up, I was wondering if I was dead. There was a mask over me, there were tubes in every orifice and I was on a drip. Because the waste matter hadn’t all been cleared out of my system, I was on antibiotics. The urgency was to clear the waste matter.

I agreed to have the operation to remove the tumour five weeks after the colostomy. Waiting for the operation, I was lying rigid in bed at home broken hearted. Terrible grief came over me. I was in a bad way, but I knew I had to get the damned thing out. Removing the tumour was a big operation. I was opened from below the navel to the pubic bone. I also had 36 lymph nodes removed as well as my uterus. I was told they were taken out as a preventative measure.

I had to have chemotherapy to get rid of any residue that might be lurking. The chemotherapy was worse than I could have imagined. I was lucky in that I had it in tablet form, but that didn’t prevent me from getting the side effects. While my hair didn’t fall out, my skin erupted and my head felt like it was bursting. I was on 14 tablets a day.

When the oncologist told me there was no cancer left, getting back my strength was the next thing. I had lost two-and-a-half stone. My doctor told me that I could forget about having the colostomy reversed until I put the weight back on. I literally had cream on everything – including my cornflakes.

I could have lived with the colostomy; many people do. I got used to it. A nurse told me it would take a bit of adjustment because of body image issues. But I never had a good body to start with. It didn’t worry me that I couldn’t wear a bikini because I never wore one anyway. The bag used to make inappropriate noises at times which inhibited me. My daughter used to say I was “percolating” when we’d be at the theatre and it would make sounds!

I had the colostomy reversal about six or seven months after the surgery. My doctor told me not to get “bunged up” because that would be stressful on the intestine which had been stitched up. I had to do exercises with my buttocks because the sphincter hadn’t been used for seven months. Since my illness, I’ve had to have two benign polyps removed.

While my cancer is gone, I have to be careful with my diet. I had one very bad episode in May 2009. My husband and I went to stay in a hotel in Killarney. The food was beautiful. It was my first time being away and eating out since I got sick. The first night, I ate too much. It wasn’t food poisoning. It was just that my system couldn’t take the amount of food I had consumed. I spent the entire night in the bathroom vomiting. I had to go to hospital.

I remember the doctor saying he didn’t like the look of what was happening to me. I was put on a drip. At the time, I still had the colostomy bag. There was a fear that there was a stoppage which would have meant immediate surgery. But after a few hours, the bag filled up and I was allowed to leave the hospital.

All the time during my illness, the doctor convinced me that I was going to get through it. I was told I had a very tough year ahead of me. The whole thing was hugely emotional. Before I got cancer, I never thought I would get sick. I used to joke that my family would have to shoot me when I got to a hundred. I’m a strong and determined person. I can look back now and remember thinking I wouldn’t get through it. There were days when I couldn’t take what was happening to me. If I stroked my stomach, it was as if I had a zip there – all these metal clamps down my stomach.

When I had thoughts about dying, I had to tell myself to stop that nonsense. There are still days when I get a bit of a heave. I was so apologetic to my family for ruining their Christmas in 2008. Now, my energy is back and I’ve given up smoking and drinking as I can’t tolerate a glass of wine anymore. I feel great.

In conversation with COLETTE SHERIDAN

Gerry McLoughlin stars in the one woman show, The Year of Magical Thinking, by Joan Didion at Cork's Everyman Palace Theatre, October 27th-November 6th