A WOMAN from Rhayader hopes her little black dress will raise a large amount of money for three good causes close to her...bowel.

Rachael Blakeway has created the incredible dress out of, well, leftover poo bags.

Perhaps even more astonishing than that is the fact that those bags have been decorated by family and friends. However, five minutes into my conversation with Rachael, it no longer seems strange.

The 45-year-old mother-of-four is funny, creative and very open about her reasons for creating this unique item of clothing, and if she’d have asked me to decorate a bag, I think I would have said yes also.

But let’s go back to 2012 when the then 40-year-old knew “something was wrong”.

“I was very tired and losing weight. I had lower back pain and then abdomen pain, and I started having to go to the toilet more,” Rachael recalls.

“My youngest was just over one at the time and at first I put my symptoms down to my body recovering from birth.

“When the abdomen pains started I thought they may have been down to my period, but after a while I just knew something was wrong.”

A doctor’s appointment in April led to an eventual cancer diagnosis in June.

“I had some scans and I had to keep pushing for them.

“At first the doctors thought I was constipated because there was a blockage. I was told it wasn’t bowel cancer because I was too young to have something that’s usually found in people over 50, but it was. A tumour had grown out of my bowel and had attached itself to my ovary.”

Four-and-a-half weeks of radiotherapy in Cheltenham followed, along with chemotherapy in tablet form.

During this time Rachael’s bowel perforated and, after an emergency operation, Stan the Stoma was born.

Stoma surgery results in a small opening on the surface of the abdomen being surgically created in order to divert the flow of faeces and/or urine.

Rachael named her stoma Stan to help put some distance between herself and the cancer.

As she got used to Stan and the ostomy bags attached to ‘him’, Rachael’s tumour was surgically removed at The Christie in Manchester.

Fast-forward to 2017 and Rachael, who still has regular check-ups but remains well, found herself with a large collection of unused ostomy bags.

“I kept them because I couldn’t return them,” said Rachael.

“They had been cut to fit the size of my stoma, and, for health and safety reasons, they can’t be reused.

“I hate anything going to waste and I’m a recycling artist, so I thought it would be nice to make something glamorous out of...well, poo bags really.”

The result is Stan’s LBD Size 28½ which goes on display at CARAD Museum & Art Gallery in Rhayader this Friday.

If you would like to support Rachael’s fundraising efforts you can email [email protected]

Read the full feature in this week’s south editions, available in shops and online now