Transcript – Encourage participation
Stephen: I’m Stephen Napier, I’m 58, I’m from North Queensland and I was diagnosed with bowel cancer in
2013.
I’ve always been fairly healthy. Um, I worked in outdoors, in the mines, truck driving and the likes. I got my kit
when I was 55 years old.
My wife Mary-Anne received the first one. She done her test and it came back good, clear.
I sorta hesitated with mine. I received it in the mail but I sort of put it in the background and I didn’t do it. And
Mary-Anne just sort of, um,
Mary-Anne: come on, you gotta do it, you gotta do it
Stephen: Yeah she just prompted me and
Mary-Anne: and he kept saying, next weekend when I’m home I’ll do it, next weekend when I’m home
Stephen: Finally Mary-Anne said no
Mary-Anne: Come now you’re going to do it
Stephen: You’re going to do it, you know. So I did it. And when I did do it, it was easy, it was simple, it wasn’t
hard at all, you know but, so that was just that concept that I don’t know that it was somehow going to be
messy and yuck and
Mary-Anne: Yeah but I kept reassuring you that it wasn’t because I’d already done it myself
Stephen: (Laughs) I should have listened to my wife, so yeah, anyway (laughs).
Well after we done the test it was a couple of weeks later, got a letter in the mail.
It said that we had an occult blood, positive blood test, uh, result. We spoke to our GP, she was really good,
she informed me of what it all meant, what, you know, how it all worked. She then referred me on to the GE
nurse at the Mackay based hospital.
I think a week or two weeks later we actually went in for the colonoscopy. The treatment itself was very
simple, um, it didn’t hurt or wasn’t invasive or anything like that. Um, yeah.
Yeah I was really surprised with the result when I got the letter from the National Bowel Cancer Screening
Program that it was positive because I had no symptoms at all.
Mary-Anne: No, none at all.
Stephen: Nothing.
Mary-Anne: When he did have it positive I was a little bit concerned but I was also excited that I had
encouraged him enough to do the test, because it yeah, it would have been pretty dismal for me if I hadn’t
encouraged him. Um, not only myself, our children, our grandchildren, would have missed out too. So, I
encourage anyone to encourage their husbands. You know, you don’t have to be the tough guy that, you
know, it is simple, it is really easy to do. Yeah.