- 6 minutes ago
What is it like to be diagnosed with colon cancer in your 20s, 30s, or 40s? In this episode of Life Lessons, five young adults share how early-onset colon cancer reshaped their lives, careers, and finances. From overlooked symptoms to the emotional and financial costs of treatment, they reveal what it’s really like to face a disease few expect at their age, and the lessons they’ve learned about resilience and health.
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00:00I thought that colorectal cancer was only something my grandparents or people
00:05way older than me could get. I had no idea that somebody at the age of 27 could get it.
00:09I was diagnosed with colon cancer when I was 30 years old. I was 42 when I was
00:19diagnosed with cancer. I'm currently in chemotherapy indefinitely. Cancer does
00:26take a toll on you, it really does. Financially, physically, mentally, emotionally,
00:32anything you can think of. Yeah, cancer is expensive. There's a substantial expense
00:39that you incur, whether it's treatment, whether it's lifestyle, whether it's lost
00:43income. People need to take young people a lot more serious when they enter these
00:49doctors rooms. The patients are getting younger every year. We as a society or a
00:55nation, a country that we do overlook young cancer.
01:05In the year running into my cancer diagnosis, I had a very full, a very busy
01:10life. I'm a retired Olympian. I am the CEO of a digital health company. I was climbing
01:18the ladder at work. I was very proud of the goals that I had made for my career.
01:24I was very active. I used to work out maybe six times a week, like twice a day. My dreams
01:32were I wanted to finish culinary school and eventually get married and have a family.
01:38In high school, I was a wrestler. I was on my way to becoming a black belt. I was working
01:44out twice a day, getting into shape, lifting again, running. I come from a small town where
01:50football is king here. So anything and everything about football is the best.
01:56We had purchased our first house. Six months later, we had our dream wedding. A year after
02:05that, we had our son. And my husband and I were really just trying to figure it out.
02:15It's really hard to talk about symptoms and warning signs before the diagnosis because the
02:20reality is, it's only apparent with hindsight.
02:25I was about seven or eight months pregnant when I started to have severe abdominal pains.
02:33I had rectal bleeding. I was nauseous all the time, vomiting.
02:39I started having bowel issues where I couldn't use the bathroom, constipation, blood in my stool,
02:44and I was losing an excessive amount of weight.
02:46I took a little vacation out to California, and I came back with a really bad stomach ache
02:54and really bad abdominal pain.
02:57I didn't have any direct warning signs for the cancer itself. Because I did have ulcerative
03:06colitis at the time, I couldn't really differentiate what was ulcerative colitis and what was actually
03:10colon cancer.
03:11I regularly give blood. And the last three times I tried to give blood in 2024,
03:16they turned me around because my iron levels were too low.
03:20When I was talking to my doctor about it, they said that it was just everything that goes
03:25along with pregnancy symptoms.
03:28A year later, I had my son and the pains had not subsided. The bleeding had not subsided.
03:36I remember specifically laying in bed multiple times and Googling the symptoms that I was having.
03:42And at the bottom of the list was always cancer. And I remember so many times in my head saying,
03:48that can't be it.
03:49If you see what you wrote now, what do you think the rule is? Where are the numbers going?
03:58I'm sitting in the doctor's office and he says, you're way too young to be sitting in my office.
04:03He told me, OK, we're going to do a procedure that's really rare for your age and we're going to do a colonoscopy.
04:12I went into the emergency room pretty convinced that I had appendicitis.
04:20And ultimately, my oncologist said, you have cancer. And I was like, all right.
04:26The hardest thing about all of this has been picking up the phone to tell people who love you what's happening.
04:33I remember talking to my sister and really planning for what I was going to say to my mum and dad in England about their kid having cancer.
04:46Having to be vulnerable and having to give information that you know is going to be hard for people to hear,
04:53100% the hardest thing about this for me.
04:55I'm 12 cycles into my chemotherapy.
05:07My oncologist says, good, blood work looking better, scans looking better.
05:11We're driving in the right direction.
05:13And some people sit down and that's not the case and it's not their fault.
05:17It is that time, chemo around 174 today.
05:22I'm exhausted.
05:23I'm considered terminal incurable.
05:28I go get scans and I get the blood work every three months and there's still active cancer in my body.
05:35I have been in chemotherapy and targeted therapy for over eight years now.
05:42It is maintenance to keep me stable because the cancer has come back and it has spread further three times.
05:50I'm already predisposed to cancer.
05:57So I was diagnosed with kidney cancer in 2019.
06:03When I heard I had cancer again, I was like, oh great, not again.
06:08Now what?
06:09Being so young and having your whole life ahead of you and you have all these dreams and aspirations of, you know, what you're going to do with your life.
06:26And they just like, my life came to a screeching halt.
06:30It's probably too soon to figure out how this diagnosis has affected my career.
06:44I've had hard conversations with our executive team and with our board that if there's a point at which I'm not doing what needs to be done, then we have a conversation.
06:55Fortunately, that hasn't come up.
06:56I work at a large bank.
06:59When I got the diagnosis, I couldn't do the same things that I was doing.
07:06My job was very, very demanding.
07:09I actually decided to resign after 10 years.
07:14That was something that I never thought I would do, but I needed to do that for my health and for myself.
07:21I worked for my family. My uncle owned convenience stores, hardware stores, and a few car washes, and I worked my way up.
07:30I knew I had to go on short-term disability because you can't be on chemo and then get down into gas tanks below ground in the middle of wintertime.
07:39I am currently working as a chef.
07:43One of the side effects that I really hated was the loss of taste and smell.
07:47I wouldn't be able to smell the food that I was cooking and I wouldn't be able to taste it.
07:54A regular 9 to 5 gig is not in the cards for me anymore.
07:58So I really have to find a new passion, a new dream to pursue.
08:04I miss producing for society. I miss having my own income.
08:10I miss the freedom that work allowed me.
08:12The financial cost of dealing with cancer is a lot.
08:22We had no idea how much that was going to cost us.
08:26Every time I went to the hospital, I owed more money.
08:29Hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars just for being in there.
08:32$2,000 here, $1,000 there, $600 for this test or for that test.
08:37Chemo treatments, the first infusion can range anywhere from $5,000 to $8,000.
08:45I got a bill actually a few months ago for $8,000.
08:51It was for a single injection that stimulates your bone marrow to produce white blood cells.
08:57I'm not sure that I could have declined it, but getting that bill out of nowhere is sort of frightening.
09:03The biggest bill I ever received was over $300,000.
09:07And that's just how much one month of treatment plus the surgery that I had had cost.
09:14Our insurance company covered a lot, but in the back of my head, I'm like, man, how can people afford this?
09:21There are all the things that, you know, you have to pay for to keep your sanity.
09:31So then you look in the mirror, you don't see someone who has cancer.
09:36I had to buy an all new wardrobe because I had lost 20 pounds.
09:42I had to get all new clothes.
09:43The wigs were probably about $200 a piece, and I think I have four of them.
09:52My hair has fallen out three times in eight years.
09:55At the beginning, it made me so weak at times.
10:07I couldn't barely get up off the couch.
10:10And I just, I felt like the weakest person alive.
10:13Sport has always been important in my life.
10:16I think, you know, growing up in high school, I was on every team the school had.
10:19As an undergraduate, I was varsity rugby, varsity rowing, and then continued rowing through to the Olympics.
10:28For the four years running into the 2008 Games, I was training 30, 35 hours a week.
10:36I went into the hospital at 140 pounds and I came out at 98.
10:43That was an unrecognizable change in my body.
10:46That lack of physical strength was so different for me, and you just, in that moment, your identity is sort of gone.
10:58That's a different relationship with your body than being an elite athlete who's trying to be the best in the world at something.
11:04You were so strong and so capable, and you see yourself lose those things. It's hard. It's hard.
11:19Two. Three.
11:23I still like to think that I'm an athlete.
11:24I've been practicing martial arts for the past, I would say, 25 years.
11:33Practice is only about an hour, but within that hour, I have to take anywhere between, you know, four to five breaks just to catch my breath.
11:41On the good days, I've really enjoyed getting back into the gym a little bit, being sort of outside.
11:51And I think that's been just as important to me physically and mentally.
11:55I work out about three times a week. I do Pilates.
12:02It's not easy, and it's not cheap.
12:06But I do it because it makes me feel good.
12:10One day you'll be feeling fine, and the next day you'll be feeling so dark, and you just need somebody to talk to.
12:27I come from a Southern Appalachian culture, and as a guy, you just weren't supposed to, you know, admit mental health or depression or struggles.
12:36It's very tough for guys to have to now take a back seat to provision and rely on your partner to kind of pick up your slack.
12:49And it's tough. It's a real hit.
12:52There probably aren't a lot of therapists who can have those conversations, and if there are, I could not find them easily.
13:01When I'm not feeling well, I'll journal and I'll get all those emotions out.
13:08And what I started to do was write my son letters for every year of his life.
13:15Figuring out how we actually make sure that every person with a cancer diagnosis has access to a therapist is an absolute imperative.
13:23Some people turn to religion. I'm not a very religious guy. I am very spiritual.
13:32My face definitely helped me out during my treatment. Before treatment, during treatment, I would always pray the Hail Mary.
13:41Whatever your thing is, whatever brings you peace, whatever brings you happiness, lean into those things so that you can heal.
13:52The social cost of having cancer is feeling like your friends are having fun without you.
14:05There's quite a few friends that I'm not as close to anymore because I couldn't do the same things that I used to do.
14:11Some friends that were there that I've known for the longest, they just vanished like ghosts. They disappeared.
14:18Maybe nobody wants to hang out with me or maybe nobody can see past the cancer.
14:25It's something that I've fought against sort of internally, which is recognizing that I do need to recover.
14:32I do need to heal. And at the same time, I don't want to be sidelined because I'm sick.
14:38At the same time, some of my very best friends, they came and see me when I was bedridden for 23 hours a day for 14 months.
14:45You can't really put words to that and how much that does strengthen a friendship.
14:51Sometimes I think I'm watching life go by and I'm on the other side of the mirror.
14:57I feel so wrapped up in cancer at times, I don't have that identity outside of my relationship with cancer.
15:04The most challenging part of my cancer treatment was relearning how to be me, how to be a dad.
15:22What is this?
15:23To be a husband, to relearn how to do the simple things in life that I otherwise took for granted beforehand.
15:33You are more than this one dimensional cancer patient.
15:40It doesn't define you as someone who is incapable of being a wife, a husband, a mother, a sibling, a leader.
15:47We are still whole and complete humans and individuals.
16:01It's interesting and I don't know whether this makes me positive or nuts, but I've always been very positive about the future.
16:08I never had the thought, I'm going to die, but that comes from a place of privilege when you have a support system, when you have health insurance, when you have good access to care.
16:18My goal is to see my son grow up and to grow old with my husband. Those are my two goals.
16:23She can see you, but looking at that one. Hey. Hey, how are you? Good.
16:36After a couple months of surgery, they did the final scan and they told me all year, congratulations, you're NED, which is no evidence of disease, which is pretty much like when you're cancer free.
16:48It felt so amazing, liberating, really.
16:53We want to try for another baby soon and I feel this is just going to be another lesson, another story that I can tell to my kids later when they get older and they're going to see me as a hero, I guess.
17:07I'm very lucky to be alive. I know saying you're very lucky and having incurable cancer is a very weird thing to say.
17:13If you're young, you got time. You got time to heal. You got time to adjust.
17:18I'm still, you know, having a great time. I still smile. I have laughter. I'm enjoying my life. And everyone asks me, how's life going? I'm like, life is beautiful.
17:28If nothing else, this has taught me that you have one life and I want to live it. I want to keep doing work that I think is important. I want to keep spending time with my friends.
17:37I want to get up early and go for a run on the beach at sunrise. I just want to get back to normal.
17:42Colon cancer doesn't care about your age, about your sex, about your ethnicity. Everybody can get it.
17:51I want others to understand that this disease is taking a lot of young lives really quickly.
17:57It is one of the most preventable cancers because the colonoscopy and screening can literally take the cancer out of the colon.
18:05Right now the recommended age for a colonoscopy is 45.
18:09We need to lower the age of a colonoscopy.
18:13Because the patients are getting younger every year.
18:16Don't let society or stigmas stop you from getting screened because the colonoscopy is just so much better than chemo.
18:22Go and get the screening that can save your life.
18:43I don't have any more questions for you, Chris. How are you feeling?
18:47I'm feeling good. I think I did good. I think I did good.
18:50These are like really actually quite big questions.
18:54Well, thank you all for asking me a privilege and an honor.
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