MAFS UK's Mel Schilling shares agonising first sign of colon cancer diagnosis
Married At First Sight star Mel Schilling has shared a painful symptoms she battled to ignore before doctors gave her the bombshell news that she had cancer.
The 52-year-old dating expert - who is married to 51-year-old Irish businessman Gareth Brisbane and they share a nine-year-old daughter named Maddie - saw her life turn upside down last year when she was diagnosed with colon cancer. In a new interview, the E4 star has explained how she dismissed her initial symptoms - and fears other women could make the same mistake.
At first she suffered abdominal pain that she dismissed as relating to her menstrual cycle and initially a doctor gave her painkillers - and she also thought her health complaints stemmed from long distance travel. While Mel is a star of MAFS UK, she also appears on the Australian version of the show - where she repeats her relationship expert role.
Speaking of her cancer battle, she said: “I just kept putting it down to travel, I knew I was run down. Last year was probably the biggest year of my career – I knew I was exhausted so I just kept saying to myself, ‘That’s all it is, I’m overtired and jet-lagged.’ My digestive system was complaining at that point and I was starting to get cramps.”
TV fans will recognise Mel as a Married At First Sight dating expert (Matt Monfredi / Channel 4)
She is married to Gareth Brisbane and they share a daughter named Maddie (@mel_schilling1)Mel confessed she initially put the painful symptoms down to period pain - and fears other women would make the same mistake. She continued to OK! magazine: "I didn’t pay enough attention to it. I think as women, we do this because we so often have pain in our abdominal area that it has become normalised. I was doubled over and shouting – the pain was so intense.”
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When she visited a GP, they gave her pain killers - but the pain continued and she lost her appetite. She struggled to eat or keep down even water, her bowel movements changed, and she started repeatedly vomiting. She then saw a specialist who ordered that she get a CT scan - at which point the cancer was discovered. The news left Mel numb but also hit her husband, Gareth, hard too as he had lost his brother to cancer five months earlier and feared he would lose Mel too.
The reality star named her tumour 'Terry' and an operation was carried out to have the growth removed. She recalls: "The minute Terry left the building the pain stopped – it was a massive relief and it felt amazing having him out of my body."
The cancer has spread, however, through the colon wall into surrounding muscel but is being treated with chemotherapy. Mel is optimistic for her outlook. She told the magazine: “I haven’t thought too much about it. I have learnt a lot about the type of chemo but I don’t know what it’ll be like for me. But it’s a form that is not too taxing on the body, so I will still be working... I’m feeling excited about everything to come. I don’t see this as a block to my future at all. For me, it’s one day at a time."
Mel first shared news of her cancer battle in December last year. Uploading a message to Instagram, she wrote: "YOU HAVE CANCER - Three little words that everyone dreads but no one ever expects to hear. Last Thursday my consultant told me those 3 words.... John Lennon famously said that life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans, how right he was. This week I had planned to travel to Northern Ireland with my family to spend Christmas with loved ones. Instead tomorrow morning I’m checking in to hospital to have an operation to remove a 5cm tumour in my colon, a tumour that had it gone undetected for much longer would have killed me.
"Despite this I feel incredibly blessed that it’s a cancer that is relatively easy to eradicate, I’m expected to make a full recovery though it’s a rough road ahead. I also feel so lucky to have an incredible support network around me, both personally and professionally, my own family and my TV family have been amazing this past few days."
For more information or support about bowel cancer, you can contact Macmillan Cancer Support or you can call 020 7940 1760 for advice.
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