A Geordie Shore star whose father died of bowel cancer after being repeatedly sent home with laxatives has urged people to recognise the warning signs of the disease.

Zahida Allen, who appeared on Geordie Shore and series six of Ex on the Beach, lost her father, Anhar Miah, to bowel cancer in February 2023, when he was aged 62.

She claims that from January 2021, he repeatedly went to his GP to seek advice for his stomach issues, which included diarrhoea, constipation that would persist for a week, and stomach pains, but that he was always sent home with laxatives rather than being offered further investigations.

By December 2021, Mr Miah required a visit to A&E following rapid weight loss, extreme fatigue, worsening bowel issues and blood in his stool and vomit. Despite this, Zahida said that he was discharged with a box of laxatives.

On Zahida’s insistence, a subsequent X-ray and CT scan revealed a bowel obstruction, with a biopsy leading to a diagnosis of incurable, inoperable stage four metastatic bowel cancer in February 2022.

Zahida, who is now 32, believes that if testing for bowel cancer had been carried out earlier, more could have been done to prolong, or potentially save, his life.

“If I didn’t say something, if I didn’t refuse to leave, still we wouldn’t have known at that time that my dad had cancer, and it would have continued developing,” Zahida said.

“And I think that is what the problem is. When my dad got misdiagnosed those other three times, the cancer was very much present, and it was multiplying, and it was growing. If he was able to find it sooner, we would have been able to look at other treatment ideas or plans sooner…

“We didn’t have the chance to look at anything. We were just told, ‘Your dad is going to die’.”

Zahida recalled that Anhar had experienced stomach issues for years, but it was always attributed to his rich diet. However, by 2021, his symptoms became more severe: he became very fatigued, rapidly lost weight, had bouts of constipation that would last for seven days, and found blood in his stool.

She said he visited his GP several times, but that he was sent home with laxatives, which did not ease his symptoms.

According to the NHS, the main symptoms of bowel cancer include changes to poo such as diarrhoea, constipation, or changes in colour; blood in the poo; stomach pain; bloating; and losing weight without trying – all of which Anhar suffered with for months.

Things came to a head for Anhar in December 2021, when Zahida was visiting her family in Newcastle and noticed he looked extremely ill.

“His eyeballs were a different colour, he looked ill, he looked skinny, his bones were sticking out. I’d never seen him like that before,” she said.

“He’d always been quite a healthy man, very active, liked swimming and running and walking, he had loads of different jobs, so for me to see him frail was really difficult.”

One day in December 2021, Anhar went to lie down for a nap but “wasn’t waking up for ages”.

When Zahida went to check on him, she found him vomiting blood and decided to call an ambulance.

It was a busy Friday night, and Zahida and Anhar waited all night to be seen – but she said he was discharged after a short consultation with another box of laxatives.

Frustrated, Zahida insisted on getting a second opinion, and another doctor sent him for an X-ray and then a CT scan.

The CT scan revealed his bowel was twisted and obstructed, and Anhar was told he needed emergency surgery that night.

Following the surgery, Zahida said she asked the doctors whether his symptoms might be caused by bowel cancer, but said she was told that while they did not believe that to be the case, they would send a sample for testing.

“I had a really bad feeling,” she said.

Zahida said it was not until February 2022 that Anhar received a phone call with the results of the biopsy, and she remembers being told that he had “stage four metastatic, incurable, inoperable, terminal bowel cancer”, which had spread to his abdomen, kidney and stomach.

“By that point, it was just so far gone,” she said.

Anhar was offered chemotherapy, which doctors hoped would prolong his life by three to five years, and began a gruelling routine where he would go to hospital fortnightly for nine hours of chemotherapy, before being sent home with a port to continue the treatment for another 48 hours.

However, Zahida said: “I think there was only one time where my dad managed two weeks at home without going to hospital. Every other time he had serious infections.

“He got grade three sepsis one time and almost died. And he’d get complete obstruction down there, and then they would say we’ll have to do an enema, or he’d get ulcers in his mouth, that would pop and then infect the stomach… can’t eat anything, can’t drink anything, so he’d have to go to hospital and get fed through a tube.

“In a way, I’m glad we didn’t have three years of that or five years of that. That is no way for someone to live. There was no point in that.”

After beginning chemotherapy in May 2022, Anhar died in February 2023, shortly after celebrating his 62nd birthday surrounded by his family.

“Now I see that God took him sooner because that wasn’t life,” she said.

“He was in an insufferable, incomprehensible amount of pain.”

Now, Zahida is honouring her dad’s memory by helping her family to run his restaurant – the Bay Leaf in Cramlington, Northumberland – and by raising awareness of the symptoms of bowel cancer and the importance of early testing.

She believes that everyone should pay closer attention to their bowel health, promoting new initiatives like healthcare company Newfoundland’s bowel health testing kit, which can detect early signs of bowel cancer – a tool which, she believes, might have helped her dad get help sooner.

“My dad was a very proud person. For him to have to talk to me about it, or me have to go to the hospital, it was mortifying for him. He found it humiliating… it shouldn’t be embarrassing because it’s a health problem,” she said.

“I hope with my message and with my dad’s story, more people have a quick look at their symptoms and just take the test and take matters into their own hands.”

“I wish we were taught more about bowel health and what is normal and what isn’t,” she added.

“If I’d known the symptoms to look out for, and known there were opportunities to self-test earlier, I genuinely believe that could have helped my dad.”

Zahida Allen has partnered with Newfoundland Diagnostics to launch the “Know Your Sh!t” campaign, encouraging more people to start conversations about their bowel health with beer mats and free bowel health tests available in pubs across London. For more information, visit www.newfoundland.io.