For Danielle Ripley-Burgess, a second battle with colon cancer really rattled her faithsomething she relied heavily on during her first bout with the disease.
Danielle tells SurvivorNet that, like so many survivors, she couldn’t help but wonder why she was being faced with cancer again at such a young age. She was first diagnosed with colon cancer when she was a high school student, and faced a second diagnosis at age 25.
Read More“It was actually harder for me, when I was 25 having cancer again,” she says. “I think I was older. The reality of what cancer meant had hit me a little deeper. There’s just something that comes with being taken out of remissionwhether it’s a second occurrence like me or whether you have a recurrence of your initial cancer. It just feels like you’ve been beat down again.”
“It’s really hard to cope with,” she adds. “But overtime, I did begin to heal. I found words for my emotions. I had great support come into my life, and my faith was pieced together little by little. I didn’t give up on it and really it didn’t give up on me.”
Faith helps many survivors get through the harder days of their cancer journeys, but there are certainly other ways to bring positivity that can make the journey a bit easier into your life. Some people choose exercise, mediation or other types of reflection.
Danielle explains that she started picking some hobbies up to help her cope with her recurrence such as baking, gardening and specifically writingwhich eventually led to her memoir, Blush.
“This is a story starting when I was in fourth grade, being an embarrassed tween girl, and takes the reader all the way through cancer at 17, cancer at 25, and then some really amazing things that happened after that,” Danielle says.
Colon Cancer in Young Adults
The majority of colon cancer cases in the United States are diagnosed in people over the age of 50, which is why doctors recommend colonoscopies beginning at age 45 for adults with average risk. However, the rate at which people under 50 are getting diagnosed has been going up, just slightly, with each year.
Dr. Heather Yeo discusses how colon cancer in people under the age of 50 can behave differently.
Doctors aren’t sure exactly why the rate is going up, however, colon cancer risk can be linked to thinks like obesity and smoking.
“We don’t know exactly why it’s increasing,” Dr. Heather Yeo, a colorectal cancer surgeon at Weill-Cornell Medical Center, told SurvivorNet in a previous conversation.
“It’s a different type of cancer. The colon cancers that are in the younger age group are more likely to be on the left side. They’re more likely to be rectal cancer. They are more likely to be aggressive tumor types,” she said, adding that, “it may be something environmental” causing these diseases.
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