DAME Deborah James is gearing up to take on every supermarket in her final days of living with bowel cancer.
The Sun writer is calling on big stores to put the symptoms of bowel cancer, such as blood in stool, on loo roll.
Already M&S is on board – it will start selling toilet rolls that raise awareness of the disease from September.
The idea came about after M&S staff member Cara Hoofe was diagnosed with stage 4 bowel cancer in 2016 at 32-years-old.
She was inspired to put forward the idea by Dame Debs after seeing all the work she has done to raise awareness.
The loo roll will warn people of the five bowel cancer signs you must never ignore in the hope of earlier diagnoses.
Read more on Deborah James
These are:
40-year-old Dame Debs, who is receiving palliative care for her incurable bowel cancer, wrote on Instagram: “We are Taking on this poo system challenge – supermarket by supermarket! Who is next!”
She congratulated Cara for her hard work and added: “We are taking supermarkets head on. @tescofood Yep I’m coming for you!”
Debs, a mum-of-two, posted a picture of Andrex loo roll with the poo emoji on the puppy’s head.”
She said: “Can we have a puppy break for a month or so @andrexuk ?! A stretch too far?! I’ll look after The puppy!!”
Yesterday Dame Debs said she was “bored of puppies” on bog roll, telling Lorraine: “”Forget about the puppies, I’m bored of the puppies.
“We need actual information signposted on those loo rolls so I’m hoping lots of other big brands will now go ‘yeah, hang on, this makes massive sense. This is what we need to be doing’.
“It’s the start of things to come, I think we should now do a big shout out to other companies now, saying come on where’s your signs and symptoms.”
Nearly 43,000 people are diagnosed with bowel cancer every year.
However the disease is treatable and curable, especially if diagnosed early.
Dame Debs has made it her mission to raise awareness of symptoms since her diagnosis in 2016, aged 35.
When she revealed at the start of May that she was stopping treatment for her disease, she continued to stress the importance of looking out for symptoms in the toilet.
Read More on The Sun
In her last episode of BBC podcast You, Me and The Big C, she said: “I can’t leave on any other word apart from check your poo.
“I still have images of me dancing in poo outfits everywhere. So maybe I should leave on that final word. Check your poo.”
Donate to the Bowelbabe Fund by clicking here.
