An "unbelievably lucky" dad's life was saved when he spotted the warning sign of a serious, potentially deadly condition known to develop under the radar.
Andrew Phillips, 48, was celebrating the ninth birthdays of his twin daughters in 2019 when he received what he described as a "warning shot" of a potentially fatal disease. He started feeling unwell while staying in a hotel during a visit to Gulliver's World in Warrington and passed blood in the bathroom.
The dad rushed to see his GP, who told him the blood had come from a massive internal bleed. Following further examination, it was discovered that the source of the blood was a golf-ball-sized gastrointestinal stromal tumour (GIST), a rare cancer that develops in the digestive system.
The dad is now training to ride a 150km route and raise money for charityTypically, GISTs are treatable if they are caught early enough, with most people able to survive their brushes with the disease. But they are not always noticed by sufferers, as the tumors won't always produce symptoms during the window in which doctors need to find and eliminate them.
The lack of early warnings mean the tumours continue to grow without people's knowledge, and may not be discovered until they spread elsewhere. At this stage, they are ultimately harder to treat, and the survival rate is ultimately diminished. In Andrew's case, he was alerted to the growing tumour when it burst and caused his internal bleeding.
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The dad, from Derby, said it was "unbelievably lucky" that it ruptured, something he explained happens very rarely with the already uncommon condition. He told the Liverpool ECHO: "It was almost a gift from the gods. It was golf ball-sized when it ruptured, and that gave me the warning I needed to get checked out, and so they found it fairly early."
He added he had a family history of cancer, and that it had killed his mother nearly 30 years ago when she was "pretty much the same age" he was now. He said: "My mum died of cancer at a similar age in 1995, which devastated us as a family. She was treated, but up until the year 2000 this disease wasn't really understood.
"Fast-forward to my illness at pretty much the same age she was when she died, I knew I had to get to the bottom of it, and thankfully I did." Andrew's life was saved following a nearly six-hour operation at Royal Liverpool Hospital in January 2020 that saw doctors remove two-thirds of his stomach.
Mr Philips now plans to cycle 150km (93 miles) from Liverpool's Liver Building to Chester and beyond to the Liverpool Arms pub in Conwy, North Wales, to raise money for GIST Cancer UK. He hopes to raise £2,000 for the charity, and his online fundraiser has already brought in more than £2,500 for patients suffering from uncommon genetic GIST subgroub PAWS-GIST.
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