Joel Ridsdale is going through a cancer fight he could perhaps have avoided.
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This is why he is urging everyone, no matter their age, to have any medical tests and screening procedures recommended to them so they can catch any potential problems early.
For Mr Ridsdale, 33, it was a fear of needles that stopped him getting recommended tests for a genetic condition in the family that increases the risk of certain cancers at younger ages.
It's a fear he now says is ironic given the number of needles and tests he's had being diagnosed with stage four bowel cancer, which was detected after what he and his doctors thought was a bout of appendicitis.
Having lived in Ballarat all his life, Mr Ridsdale moved to Perth in November to start a new career, followed by girlfriend Emma Drowley in February. Just weeks after Ms Drowley arrived he suffered severe stomach pain and pushed through it for a few days before finally going to hospital.
Surgeons removed his appendix, which was partially inflamed, and after two weeks he returned to his new job as a recruitment consultant but was still in pain. A few days later the pain peaked again and would not subside.
He was again admitted to hospital for further testing which revealed some complications from surgery and doctors planned to discharge him, but changed their mind at the last minute.
"They came in and were a bit more serious, not as jovial as they had been, and said they had gotten tests from the appendix back and there was nothing wrong with it ... which raised a massive red flag to them," he said.
He was discharged to spend Easter at home, but booked for a PET scan and colonoscopy on April 15.
After having the PET scan, but before the colonoscopy, his surgeon told him the bad news.
"She's very direct, doesn't beat around the bush, and said she looked at the PET scan, it's cancer, and that's what she'll be looking for in the colonoscopy," Mr Ridsdale said.
Mr Ridsdale's mum Cindy had bowel cancer in 2012, one of her brothers died from the disease and her other brother has also been treated. Lynch syndrome, a genetic defect that increases the risk of developing bowel or, in women, endometrial cancer, is known to run in their family and caused the cancer in Mr Ridsdale's mother and uncles.
According to Cancer Council Victoria, Lynch syndrome is believed to be Australia's most common inherited cancer risk, with one in 280 Australians believed to carry the mismatch repair gene deficiency. But only one in 20 Australians with the syndrome are diagnosed.
"I obviously have it too," he said. "I should have had a test done a few years ago which I didn't get done because, ironically, I don't like needles. If I had had the test and found out I had the gene I would have had to have regular colonoscopies which might have caught this sooner."
Two days after being told he had cancer, the surgeon operated to resect his bowel and remove as much of the cancer as possible, but there were pockets in the lymph nodes near his pancreas and liver that were too close to major blood vessels to be removed.
Mr Ridsdale is among the growing number of young people developing bowel cancer.
It was only on May 17, with Ms Drowsley by his side and his parents on speaker phone from Ballarat, that he learned the cancer was stage four.
"Stage four cancer is a very scary thing to hear straight off the bat," he said. "But the fear of getting checked is not at all as big as the fear when you are told you've got stage four cancer."
Mr Ridsdale and Ms Drowsley are now struggling to decide whether to stay in Perth or return to Ballarat.
He begins immunotherapy, a targeted treatment for his particular type of cancer, this week in Perth and is awaiting a hospital decision on a new type of immunotherapy.
"Whether to stay in Perth or come back to Ballarat all depends on how I react to it. There's a new way they are targeting this cancer which is very, very expensive and not on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme yet."
The drug costs around $100,000 per treatment but costs are capped at around $310,000.
"My doctor has applied to the hospital to get them to pay for it but they don't have much hope it will be because there is other immunotherapy that has been having similar success rates," he said.
"If I get approved for that we will definitely stay in Perth, but if not then I've been looking at maybe doing a few treatments here then coming back to Ballarat ... so at the moment I'm one foot in Perth, one foot in Ballarat depending how treatment goes and how I respond to it."
Mr Ridsdale's siblings have set up a Go Fund Me to help their brother with medical costs and living costs while he cannot work, or the costs of returning home.
