When it comes to describing 2023, Jordan Sime isn’t mincing his words.
“2023’s been shit,” the 38-year-old forestry worker from Brightwater, southwest of Nelson, said.
In June, then aged 37, Sime was diagnosed with bowel cancer, which turned 2023 into a wild ride.
Now, he’s looking forward to spending time with his family and buying a caravan for trips away with his wife Shanan and daughter Kenzie, 4.
But, he’s also hoping his story may help a few people sit up and take notice – especially those who think they’re too young for a bowel cancer diagnosis.
Sime was like that – he never looked in the toilet to check for blood after a bowel motion.
“When I started looking, I started noticing.”
Even when he started getting a dull ache in his lower right abdomen in late 2022 it took until June, and the pain getting much worse, for him to be seen.
On that day he went to the emergency department worried about appendicitis, and discovered his haemoglobin level was dangerously low.
Martin De Ruyter/Stuff
Jordan Sime was 37 when he was diagnosed with bowel cancer in June 2023. He’s looking forward to a brighter 2024.
From there he was sent to his GP, and because he had health insurance he was able to push for a private colonoscopy referral.
After a delay where he had to chase up with the GP – and two more visits to the emergency room – he managed to get the colonoscopy in mid-July.
By this stage he was checking the toilet, and it was bad, he said.
“I never noticed until they put it in my mind that I should be looking.”
After the colonoscopy, he was taken into a room.
“They just hit you straight with you’ve got bowel cancer, and it’s quite big, like it’s almost fully blocking your bowel … I was expecting it, but when you hear it, that just really cements what is actually happening.”
After biopsies were processed, the cancer was identified as stage 2-A. It was contained to his bowel but was partially into a blood vessel.
From there he had the tumour removed, but then had a complication when his bowel leaked and ended up having emergency surgery and staying in hospital for 17 days.
Jordan Sime with his wife Shanan and their daughter Kenzie. Sime was 37 when he was diagnosed with bowel cancer in June 2023.
Six weeks later he started chemotherapy. But, after the second round, he faced another complication when it attacked his gallbladder, causing it to burst – meaning another operation.
That complication meant he stopped the chemo, but his team was confident it was under control, and now he’s in a phase of monitoring.
The whole experience had been a “wild, wild ride”, particularly given so many complications along the way.
As difficult as it had been on him, Sime said watching the toll it took on his family was the hardest part.
“I would sooner be in the position that I am over my friends and family. I think it’s way harder for your loved ones.”
When his gall bladder burst, and he had to call an ambulance, he just remembered seeing Kenzie crying.
“A four-year-old shouldn’t have to feel it, eh. That was the toughest thing mentally for me to go through, was when your child’s broken. That’s yeah, that’s the toughest, toughest part ever.”
But for all the tough parts, Sime has many positive stories to tell.
Like the amazing support of the staff at Nelson Hospital, or reaching out to comedian Dai Henwood who went public with his own stage four bowel cancer diagnosis in 2023.
LAWRENCE SMITH/Stuff
Comedian and presenter, Dai Henwood, helped support Sime through his cancer journey.
The two had become close and regularly messaged, with Henwood offering tools to help him through and advice along the way.
“Honestly, I don’t think mentally I probably would have come through it the way I did without his help.”
Cancer changed people – everything felt amplified and it made you appreciate life, he said.
“My wife and I are closer than we’ve ever been in the 12 years of being together … if you could take that so someone didn’t have to have cancer, but you could take that experience and give it to other people, I reckon the world would be a way better place.”
Having taken six months off work unpaid, Sime said he was lucky to be able to get ACC due to the first surgical complication.
That money had only just come through, and till now they’d got by with savings and support from a Givealittle page and the Cancer Society and Bowel Cancer New Zealand support.
In January, he would be going back to work and the aim was to save and buy a caravan for family camping trips.
If he had a message for others, it was that no one was too young for bowel cancer, and not to let doctors tell you nothing was wrong.
He’s so grateful now that he pushed for the colonoscopy, and that he was lucky enough to be able to go private.
“You’ve just got to be that squeaky wheel for yourself.”
Bowel Cancer New Zealand is calling for the national screening age to be lowered to 50.
General manager Rebekah Heal said the cancer was “increasingly prevalent in younger people”.
“Research shows colon cancer has risen by 14 per cent in men and rectal cancer by 18 per cent in men under 50 alone in the past decade. In the next decade, it’s estimated that one in 10 colon cancers and one in four rectal cancers will be diagnosed in adults younger than 50.”
More than 3000 New Zealanders are diagnosed with bowel cancer, and 1200 die from the disease each year – 350 of those diagnosed are aged under 50.
