My sister Melanie was 19 years old when she was diagnosed with Crohn’s disease, an autoimmune disease that affects your digestive tract. This diagnosis made her life already hard to deal with. Three years later, during a colonoscopy to check on her Crohn’s, a mass was found and biopsied. It was determined that she had colon cancer.
She fought through chemotherapy along with trying immunotherapies to gain remission. After fighting for about a year she gained remission from her cancer. But in 2021 her cancer returned, stage IV. It had severely metastasized.
A few months in, and even after chemotherapy and immunotherapies, the tumors that were pushing on her abdomen made it so she was no longer able to eat. She got her nutrition intravenously through TPN. Chemotherapy was rough and left her with almost no quality of life as she was constantly throwing up. Her personality started to only show up rarely. It was devastating.
She went through countless blood transfusions and even has genetic anomalies that her tumors have a whole separate DNA than she does. She was a medical mystery but the culprit was colon cancer. In August 2022 she was admitted to the hospital. Her tumors were so large in her small intestines and so full of fluid that even though she was getting IV nutrition she wasn’t able to digest any of it. She was taken off TPN and transferred to hospice. About a week later she passed away. She was 25.
I want to share my journey alongside my sissy because even though it’s so rare for my sister to get two types of colon cancer before 25, cancer does not care how old you are. Cancer can affect anyone of any age. It can happen to you. Please get checked. 50 is also young for colon cancer but it is so important to get that colonoscopy.
RETURN TO FACES OF BLUE Young Onset Colorectal Cancer Signs & Symptoms of Colorectal Cancer
