Fatigue. I was a mom with a new baby at 42 and I had two elementary aged children. I also suffered from insomnia so being extremely (extremely) fatigued was the norm and I didn’t think anything of it. The month my baby turned two years old I had bloody stool everyday, so I scheduled a colonoscopy. The doctor said it could be a lot of things and thought I was just too young I might not even need the colonoscopy but scheduled one 4 months out just to see what was going on.
Come the day of the colonoscopy I was diagnosed with stage IV colon cancer that had already spread to my liver and lungs. I had no other symptoms, no pain, no odd bowel movements, and the bloody stool cleared up on it’s own in those few months. Honestly I was blindsided. I do not have a history of early cancer in my family (though I did have an aunt that had gotten it at 64) and all the genetic DNA tests showed that I had no hereditary cancer matches. I lived a clean life, no smoking, almost no drinking ( in the past 10 years I’ve probably had no more than 7 glasses of wine total), I didn’t even so much as go to a beauty salon to get my hair dyed or nails done. I’ve always avoided toxins, I won’t use weed-killer on my lawn (much to the chagrin of my neighbors) and I combat ants with dishsoap and chili powder. The point is, I’m pretty clean living for this day and age, and yet I still got cancer.
It’s been just about a year now, I’m 45, I had half my liver removed and the offending portion of colon, but I had new spots in my lungs show up. I will never be “cured” of cancer unless medicines get very good very quickly, and my cancer will never go into remission. My one hope is that I can make it another 9 years to see my two girls become adults and my son turn at least 12. I just don’t want them to feel cheated of losing their mother too soon.
The real reason I’m writing this is because I was so blindsided, and apparently it’s becoming more common for people younger and younger to get colon cancer. And I really had NO noticeable symptoms. Have my bowel movements changed over my life? Sure. But I had three babies and three miscarriages and that does a lot to change how the body works. Am I overweight and live a sedentary lifestyle? Yes, that too happened over time once I became a stay-at-home-mother. I worked all kinds of jobs before, nightshifts and the like. I’ve even worked two jobs where I had to stay awake and work through 24 hour periods on multiple occasions. Fatigue and insomnia were always par for the course. So sometimes there just isn’t any “tell” before it really is too late. If anyone reading this has any odd symptoms of anything, it’s worth getting things checked out. Because you just don’t know, and at this point I just wish I had found out before my cancer had reached stage IV.