WHEN Married At First Sight’s Ryan Livesey wet the bed he blamed it on having too many beers.
But the 29-year-old ‘went instantly numb’ when he finally addressed the health issues he’d been ignoring for seven months, being told he had cancer.
Just 22 at the time, and with a baby on the way with his ex-partner, Ryan was terrified that he wouldn’t see his son grow up or even be born.
“I started wetting the bed, it was really embarrassing but I put it down to having too much to drink and of course, I didn’t tell anyone and hid it,” Ryan says.
“I’d go to the toilet and not feel like I was emptying my bladder properly.
“I’d have to go again 20 minutes later because I couldn’t hold it in
“Looking back now, I should have known something was wrong but because the increase in frequency happened gradually, I was able to ignore it.
“If I’d gone to the doctors when I first experienced symptoms in 2016, things could have been different.
“Every bloke reading this will know there are posters in public toilets with health messages on them but we tend to ignore them.”
Ryan, now in remission, urges men to pay attention to their health and believes most men put it off out of embarrassment or pride.
But dropping his trousers saved his life – and he’s now hoping to find a long marriage on the screen.
The semi-professional football player and Sionainn were the last couple to enter the latest series of Channel 4’s MAFS UK in scenes aired last night.
It was after a night out in town with mates in the spring of 2017 that Ryan first noticed blood in his urine – having already been experiencing bed-wetting since the end of 2016.
“It was April,” recalls Ryan. “I know because it was the night of the Anthony Joshua/Wladimir Klitschko fight.
“I’d been on the beers with some mates and when I went to the toilet towards the end of the night, I had a bit of blood in my urine.
“It wasn’t loads, maybe a bottle top full so I just put it down to drinking too much and tried not to think too much about it.”
While he told his aunty who he’s close to, Ryan kept trying to ignore his mounting symptoms, rejecting his aunt’s advice to go and see his doctor.
He says: “I don’t know what I thought but I knew I didn’t want to see a doctor.
“I suppose a bit of me felt embarrassed about it, but unfortunately, it didn’t go away.”
It was around May 2017 that his symptoms got to breaking point after football training one night.
“I urinated pretty much pure blood,” Ryan admits.
“I was 22 years old, my ex-partner was pregnant with my son, who was due in November that year. I was about to be a father, and I had weed pure blood.
“Yes I knew I had something wrong, but I didn’t think for a second it’d be something serious. I thought at worst it’d be kidney stones or something like that.”
After reluctantly making an appointment with his GP, in June 2017, Ryan was diagnosed with stage two bladder cancer.
He became one of the 10,500 people in the UK each year – and 29 per day – to receive this devastating news.
“I was in complete shock,” Ryan admits.
“It’s not something you expect when you’re young, you think it’ll affect older people, that it’s an old man’s disease.
“I remember my doctor saying the word cancer and I felt instantly numb.
“It was like the world closed in around me. All I could think about was my son who was due in five months.
“I’d had symptoms for seven months and it’d taken me that long to see a doctor.”
Ryan was told he’d need surgery to remove the cancer and scrape the lining of his bladder.
All I could think about was the fact I was so excited about being a dad, yet I hadn’t taken my health seriously.
Ryan
He’d also need chemotherapy for a week but it was while undergoing treatment for one of three recurrences that happened in the next 18 months, the huge toll of the diagnosis came crashing down on him.
He says: “Leo was born on November 11 and it was the best day of my life.
“Even with everything else going on treatment-wise, I was so happy. But then the thoughts about not being around for him started to make me feel really low.
“I felt anxiety, depression – all I could think about was the fact I was so excited about being a dad, yet I hadn’t taken my health seriously.”
While Ryan is checked annually now to make sure the cancer hasn’t returned, he admits: “I worry about it a lot.
“Leo’s six now, I want to be here to watch him grow up, I want to be an active dad.
“Leo was part of the reason I went and got checked – despite the fact he wasn’t even born yet. In a way, he helped save my life.”
The new groom says he wishes he’d gone to the GP sooner warning others: “The thing is, it really can be life or death so men, especially young men need to take charge of their health more.
“If I’d read a story like this when I was experiencing my own symptoms, it’d have made me call the doctor sooner I think.
“When you’re young, you think you’re going to last forever. You think cancer is something that affects other people but men need to get better at taking care of themselves.”
There are around 10,500 new bladder cancer cases in the UK every year, according to Cancer Research.
That’s 29 every day, making it the 11th most common form of cancer in the UK.
Smoking is the single biggest risk factor for bladder cancer, causing 45 per cent of cases in the UK.
But exposure to other chemicals, including industrial, is also known to be a cause. Sometimes the cause of bladder cancer is not known.
Around six in 10 cases are in people aged 75 or over, with a steep rise in risk from age 50.
The signs of bladder cancer
