THE widower of a woman whose irritable bowel syndrome symptoms masked her bowel cancer will be remembering his wife by joining more than 1,000 women in this year's Midnight Memories walk.

Alan McGuinness, aged 55, lost his wife Judith two years ago and has since been working hard to raise awareness about the disease.

Mrs McGuinness suffered for three and a half years with stage four bowel cancer after she was diagnosed in February 2010 and died in Bolton Hospice on June 29, 2013, aged 56.

Her husband believes her cancer might have been picked up earlier if many of the symptoms did not mirror that of her IBS.

He said: "My wife died in Bolton Hospice so I wanted to do the walk as a personal thank you. I will never forget the day I received a phone call from her saying she had cancer.

"She'd had a colonoscopy after her IBS symptoms got much worse and they found a big tumour.

"For most of her life she had IBS so this masked a lot of the symptoms she would have gone to the doctor about straight away under normal circumstances.

"She was a holistic therapist so she ate good food and was healthy, but some of the symptoms that are known for bowel cancer were what she suffered regularly. If she had gone to the doctors two years before she did when it was a polyp, it would probably have been treatable and she might still be here today."

Mr McGuinness, who lives in Adlington, thinks that the age for screening on the NHS should be lowered to 50 from the current age of 60.

He said: "What frustrates me is that 90 per cent of people who get bowel cancer are over the age of 50, yet the free screenings are only for those over 60.

"They say it's to cut costs but it's a false economy — people who get diagnosed and have to go through extensive treatment are costly. But as is always the case with the government, they are always thinking in the short term."