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Jeremy Bowen, former BBC editor for the Middle East, has been diagnosed with bowel cancer.
The former BBC breakfast leader said that he was following chemotherapy after noticing "funny pains in the legs and in the back" while he was in Iraq in last May.
Screening for bowel cancer in England will begin to take place at the age of 50, Public Health England said last year.
April is the month of bowel cancer awareness and Bowen revealed his diagnosis to raise awareness about the disease.
- England's gut screening starts at age 50
- Health Screening Not Achieving Goals & # 39;
Doctors initially thought the veteran reporter's pain was due to scars from an earlier surgery, he told BBC Breakfast.
"I had no symptoms – none of the clbadic symptoms of bowel cancer – nothing at all, but I thought I should be screened," he said.
He said he received a positive result and had a colonoscopy – a camera inserted into the colon looking for signs of cancer.
"It's not as bad as it seems – they give you a lot of drugs," he said.
& # 39; Test it & # 39;
The surgeons discovered a tumor that they removed and he was currently undergoing chemotherapy.
Bowen, born in Cardiff, and a BBC journalist for 35 years, said his diagnosis "could have been earlier, but that if it had been later, it would have been much more serious," he said. .
"The important thing is to get tested, and I tell all my friends to get tested.
"Things to do with your bowel and your poop … are not things that people normally want to talk about, but in reality, it's part of our life and you have to work on it."
He said that a gastroenterologist had told him: "Do not die embarrbadment, for the sake of God."
He said that chemotherapy "is not as bad as I thought in terms of side effects, but that it affects people differently and I think I've just had the chance to tolerate it better than I expected. "
"You have to stay positive about certain things in life – it's all part of the journey, as they say in Strictly [Come Dancing]," he added.
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