Wednesday 29 June 2022 10:18 AM Dame Deborah James achieved more in a few short weeks than most do in a lifetime trends now
Faced with the enormity of saying goodbye, others might have floundered.
Not Deborah James. She embraced the last precious weeks of life with an extraordinary gusto; a passion for making a difference that even at her frailest bestowed on her a kind of radiance.
Dressing up in ‘nice clothes’ and ‘popping on some lippy’ helped keep her going, she said.
But what stood out in those final photographs – on trips to Ascot with her brother and Glyndebourne Opera with her husband this month, at Chelsea Flower Show last month holding a glass of champagne in front of a rose, named in her honour, or sitting next to Prince William, newly-bestowed Dame Commander medal pinned to her breast – was her smile. A megawatt grin so broad it could light up the darkest room.
And while there will be many tears today from the family to whom she was devoted and the many, many lives she touched through her passion not just for raising awareness of bowel cancer but how to live with cancer, Deborah James, otherwise known as Bowelbabe, achieved so very much to smile about.
What she chalked up in these last short weeks since announcing that she was receiving end-of-life care is more than most of us could hope to achieve in a lifetime: There’s the Damehood, of course, the rose, a book that rocketed straight to the top of the Amazon charts (before it’s even published), a clothing line, even a Lego figurine.
And that’s before you get to the £6.7 million (and counting) raised for vital cancer research through her hastily-launched, but phenomenally successful, Bowelbabe Fund.
Pictured: Dame Deborah James attends Royal Ascot on June 15 this year
BBC podcast host Deborah James has passed away following her five-year battle with cancer
In recent weeks, she was made a dame by the Duke of Cambridge at her family home, with William praising her for 'going above and beyond to make a very special memory'
Prince William, who visited Dame Deborah at her parents’ home in Woking, sitting with her in the garden in which she wanted to spend her final moments with her family and honouring her ‘tireless campaigning’ to raise awareness of bowel cancer, called her a ‘brave and inspirational woman’.
But, truthfully, there are no superlatives that really do justice to what Deborah James achieved in the time since she was diagnosed with bowel cancer in December 2016.
Last month, as she confronted the new, palliative, stage of her own care, the 40-year-old mother-of-two poignantly insisted she wasn’t brave, writing: ‘I am not brave – I am not dignified going towards my death, I am simply a scared girl who is doing something she has no choice in but I know I am grateful for the life that I have had.’ Others would disagree. Yes, she was unfailingly honest about her fears – her determination to shield her children, Eloise, 12 and Hugo, 14, from her darkest moments; of being alone.
Yet, she was determined to grasp every minute of life with both hands – whether that be going outside to feel the rain on her face or summoning the energy to keep urging people to ‘check your poo’ or to donate to her fund.
As she said: ‘I always said I wanted to slide in sideways when my time is up, with a massive smile, no regrets and a big glass of champagne! Still my intention!!’
Her legacy is truly extraordinary. Last night donations to her fund, which will support clinical trials and research into potentially life-saving developments as well as campaigns to raise awareness, were continuing to rocket, while health bosses have seen tens of thousands of extra visits to a NHS bowel cancer resources page since Dame Deborah launched her fund on May 9.
The death of podcast host Dame Deborah James at the age of 40 was announced by her family
Dame Deborah shared this image after an operation when she revealed cancer had returned
By focusing on everything Dame Deborah achieved as ‘Bowelbabe’, it’s easy to overlook the 35 years that went before.
She was a very successful deputy headteacher, helping to turn around failing schools, a mother to two young children and rebuilding her marriage to banker husband Sebastien Bowen when her world ‘shattered into tiny pieces, just days before Christmas 2016’.
She spoke and wrote about that moment, and the numerous, rollercoaster stages of the journey that followed, many times in the years that followed, first in her personal blog, then in a column she began writing for The Sun newspaper and then in the award-winning podcast You, Me & the Big C, which she hosted alongside fellow cancer sufferers Lauren Mahon and Rachael Bland.
Rachael sadly died in September 2018, with her husband Steve taking her place in the trio as the podcast continued.
As for Bowelbabe, a superhero name if ever there was one, it wasn’t the creation of a slick marketing team, but rather the alter ego Dame Deborah created for herself when she started blogging after diagnosis; it projected a feeling of strength, she said.
And she needed that strength; she had seen three separate GPs, been told her symptoms were probably IBS and had rounds of tests before the blow struck: Stage 3 bowel cancer, reclassified just weeks later as stage 4 when medics realised the disease had spread to the lungs.
BBC podcast host Deborah James has passed away following her five-year battle with bowel cancer, her family has announced in an Instagram post, which included this above photo
The super-fit vegetarian who didn’t ‘really fit the profile of someone with bowel cancer’, but who had been experiencing symptoms (exhaustion, changed bowl habits, bleeding) for about six months was suddenly facing statistics telling her that her chance of living five years or longer was just 8 per cent.
As she wrote: ‘Five years became this terrifying benchmark in my head. There was nothing I could find to make the data better – and believe me, I searched for it.
‘I mourned all the milestones I would miss; my 40th birthday, seeing my kids go to secondary school, celebrating another Christmas, new decorations on the tree.’ And then those very milestones kept on passing and, in December, the biggest of them – five years – also passed.
There were highs and lows which she shared with her followers (on Instagram they have grown from 495,000 to more than one million in the last weeks alone). She didn’t hide the brutal treatment regime that included countless cycles of chemo, numerous operations (17 tumours removed), new treatments that were emerging only as her own journey with cancer progressed.
She wasn’t embarrassed about poo. ‘Check your poo’ was practically her mantra.
Nor did she shy away from any opportunity to throw her arms around life: She appeared on breakfast TV in her bra and knickers, she danced with her children, she ran, she holidayed in the sunshine, she put on her lippy and she determined that whatever was going on in her life, she could make a
