Yesterday evening ‘Diagnose De Wild’ was shown: a documentary in which Ruud de Wild (52) shows how his life was suddenly turned upside down after the diagnosis of colon cancer. Ruud talks candidly about his first complaints and diagnosis, but also his fear of dying and the impact the disease has had on his relationship with Olcay Gulsen (41).
“This period says so much more than saying yes to each other or whatever”
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Ruud says that he starts to worry when he once has blood in his stool at night. He initially decides not to tell his girlfriend Olcay anything, but does contact a friend of hers, who is a gastroenterologist. She gives him suppositories for hemorrhoids and advises him to wait two weeks. If the complaints do not go away, he should go to the doctor and ask for an endoscopy.
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Ruud tries to keep Olcay out of it during that period, but eventually tells her that he is going to do an endoscopy, because it was ‘good to do that research’. At Olcay, no alarm bells went off at first. “Ruud is a hypochondriac,” she says. “I just added that to his list of other complaints.” Ruud, on the other hand, does not have a good feeling about it. “You tried to convince me to cancel that appointment the night before,” Olcay recalls.
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Although it is initially the intention that Olcay be present at the endoscopy, this is not allowed due to corona measures. After two hours of waiting, she begins to worry. What she does not know is that Ruud was told at that time that he has colon cancer. “Then he came through those swinging doors, crying,” she recalls. “And then he said: ‘It’s really not good, I’m not going to make it’. The presenter says that at that moment she preferred to ‘take off her shoes and run out of the hospital as quickly as possible'”.
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What follows is a period full of interventions, operations and uncertainty. In this difficult time, the two know how to find a lot of support in each other. “Something happened in the hospital,” says Ruud. “This period says so much more than saying yes or whatever. This is something much bigger.”
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When it turns out that Ruud is not yet completely cancer-free, it is difficult for him to process the news. He is told that he will have a stoma. Something he greatly dreads. His doctor eventually offers him other options and they decide to go for another option together. Unfortunately, the day after the operation, it turned out not to have gone well. When Ruud is recovering at home, things go wrong. “Then I was in the shower and suddenly I saw a lot of blood. I got dizzy and I started screaming.” Olcay is vacuuming downstairs at that moment. “I heard loud screams upstairs,” she looks back. She rushes upstairs and sees Ruud standing in a huge pool of blood. She immediately calls 112. “10 minutes later I was in the ambulance,” said Ruud.
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Ruud ends up in the emergency room and according to Olcay he is completely through at that moment. “You really thought, this isn’t going to get any better.” The surgeon eventually decides that he has no choice but to give Ruud a temporary stoma and according to Olcay everything becomes ‘lighter’ from that moment on. “You could walk again and we walked a lot. On the one hand it was the rockiest period, but on the other hand also the most beautiful.” When Ruud goes to the hospital for a repair operation not much later, he gets good news. The stoma can be removed and everything appears to have healed nicely. As we now know, Ruud is also declared clean.
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Ruud de Wild declared clean: ‘I’m on the right way back’
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