After his first blood test appointment, no results were reported back to him. But after his second blood test appointment a year later, Robert received a call to inform him that the test had detected a cancer signal. “I wasn’t worried,” he says. “I felt fit, had no symptoms at all.”

After scans and biopsies showed no evidence of cancer, he put it out of his mind. Life continued as normal for Robert, who works as a carpenter for a kitchen company and who is married with two grown-up children.

He attended a third blood test appointment the following year, which yet again gave a Cancer Signal Detected result with a head and neck Cancer Signal Origin. Doctors carried out a second panendoscopy, a camera procedure under anaesthetic with tissue samples. The result was remarkable: a squamous cell carcinoma at the base of his tongue, staged as Stage I. It was detected before any symptoms appeared. “I was shell shocked. I’d gone from feeling great to being told I had cancer, but am grateful it was caught before it became more serious.”

Robert began treatment in January 2025, a combination of radiotherapy and chemotherapy. Treatment was intense. “Radiotherapy to the throat is brutal,” Robert admits. “I lost a stone and a half, and for a while eating was almost impossible.” But by February, treatment was complete. Within months, Robert was back at work, playing badminton and pickleball, and enjoying life again.

Rob adds, “If the cancer wasn’t flagged up by the trial, it could have been Stage II or Stage III. It could have gone somewhere else, up to my brain, down to my lungs, according to my doctor. I possibly wouldn’t have known about it. So, to have it flagged up in the earlier stages of the cancer obviously makes a big difference.”