I’VE been sitting on a poo test for over a month now.

Lots of excuses but none of them wash. Fact is, I’m just terrified of finding out I have cancer. I know that if I do have bowel cancer the earlier it is diagnosed the higher the chance of successful treatment. But the desire to avoid the fact that I’m in my late 50s and that’s when this sort of thing starts happening is stronger than my common sense.

But, I remind myself, you don’t have to want to do something, to decide to do it. So, this week, I am going to make myself read the instructions and I am going to collect a sample, seal it in the little container the NHS has sent me and pop it off in the post for analysis. Then I will wait to find out if further tests are necessary.

With the development of life-saving screening tools, we all need to get used to having bits of us measured, sampled, squashed, photographed and analysed for rogue behaviour.

If any of my cells are multiplying when they shouldn’t, now is most definitely the time to find out. The hard part emotionally is the binary nature of the first phase of testing. It’s a ‘yes’ or it’s ‘no’. Either I will need more tests, or this first screen will give me the ‘all clear’.

For those of us lucky enough to have friends and family, it’s gentle encouragement we need to face our fears about being mortal. Knowledge is power. The power to make decisions. The power to face realities and plan for futures. If the late Dame Debbie James can wear a poo costume and dance about on telly raising awareness, I can do a solitary home-test.

Public health screening campaigns are precious and vital to all our health. Early diagnosis is strongly correlated to better outcomes. So don’t get caught between two stools… when faced with choosing to hide from knowledge and choosing to seek answers, there’s only one self-loving action to take – and that’s the test.