25-year-old finishes 12 rounds of chemotherapy, but a week later doctors discover another life-threatening emergency (Exclusive)

HE NEEDS TO KNOW

• Paige Seifert knew something was wrong when she saw blood in her stool

• The then 24-year-old’s concerns were initially dismissed before he was eventually diagnosed with stage 3 colon cancer.

• Now in remission, Seifert shares videos of her experience on TikTok and talks to PEOPLE about how she’s doing today

Paige Seifert knew something was wrong when she saw blood in her stool during a trip with friends in August 2024.

Seifert, then 24, told himself that if things didn’t clear up by the next week, he’d see a doctor. So when the week went by and nothing improved, she wasted no time before booking an appointment.

During the checkup, the doctor asked if her family had a history of gastrointestinal (GI) problems. When she said no, she was told it was most likely hemorrhoids and would go away after a week with stool softener.

“That didn’t go away, but luckily I happened to have a physical a month later,” Seifert tells PEOPLE exclusively. “I went to the clinic and it was still happening constantly. They said, ‘We’re going to send you to a gastrointestinal specialist to get your hemorrhoids banded.’ They said, “It’s still hemorrhoids. It can’t be anything else. You’re 24, your blood looks great. You’re not anemic. It’s really nothing to worry about.”

When he finally went to the gastrointestinal specialist in December 2024, he was still experiencing the same symptoms. He then scheduled a colonoscopy for the following month to get a general picture before going for hemorrhoid surgery.

“Everything is like a six-month process because referrals take forever, especially when you’re 24 and healthy,” she says. “There’s no real rush to get you to the doctor.”

However, when he finally had his colonoscopy in January 2025, everything changed.

“I finally get a colonoscopy and I wake up and the doctor is sitting there and immediately tells me that they found cancer. They didn’t even have to biopsy it or anything,” she says.

Immediately after, they referred her to an oncologist to come up with a plan of action. She was officially diagnosed with stage 3 colorectal cancer a week later.

They told Seifert he would need 12 rounds of chemotherapy and a colon resection — or colectomy, surgery to remove all or part of the colon. They told her it didn’t matter what she did first, so on February 12, 2025, Seifert had a chest port and officially started chemotherapy five days later.

“I was like, ‘It’s ski season, so if you give me the green light to ski, let’s do chemo now and have surgery later,'” she says. “I did eight sets of chemotherapy, I took a month off so I could recover for the surgery. Then I had my surgery and then I had a temporary ileostomy.”

After a break from chemotherapy, he underwent colon resection surgery and a temporary ileostomy – which allows digestive waste to exit the small intestine through a stoma in the abdomen – in July 2025.

“A month later, they reversed that ileostomy. Then I finished four more rounds of chemo,” says Seifert.

During the trial, Seifert says she was so lucky to “have such a great support system.”

“My mom flew in from Texas to come for the colonoscopy, just because I needed a ride,” she tells PEOPLE. “I think she was a bit scared so she came with me and right from the doctor who told me I had cancer, I had her by my side.”

“As soon as I told my friends, they were extremely supportive. My dad flew to his first oncology appointment and they went for his first chemotherapy treatment,” she adds.

Unfortunately, Seifert says her mother was diagnosed with breast cancer around the same time, so she had to take a step back to focus on her own health.

However, going through chemotherapy at the same time bonded the two even more, Seifert says.

“And that’s been a great support system because my mom is already so supportive and then she could feel my pain, which I hate that she had to go through that, but to be able to talk to someone who knows exactly what chemotherapy is like and is going through it with you is really great,” she says. “It’s hard to find that community at the cancer center because I’m probably the youngest person there by two decades.”

Along with the support of loved ones, Seifert, an avid skier, says physical activity has kept her “positive and happy.” He would go in every other month for treatment, get his infusion, then take a few days to rest, and on weekends, he would ski about 15 miles.

After 10 months, Seifert officially finished treatment on November 17, 2025. However, just a week later, doctors discovered a 5 cm blood clot near her heart and a pulmonary embolism, which was “found as an accident.”

“The doctors were quite shocked that I was alive and standing and talking,” she says, explaining that she simply went in for a follow-up CT scan after finishing chemo.

“The doctor called me two hours later and said, ‘Hey, do you have any chest pain?’ I said, “No, I just got back from an eight-mile mountain bike ride. I feel great. He says, ‘You need to go to the hospital right now. You’re about to have a heart attack or die.’

“I went straight to the hospital and was there for a week over Thanksgiving and had surgery to have it removed,” she says.

Now, Seifert says she’s “feeling great,” which she admits is “a crazy thing to say” considering she “had stage 3 cancer and had to think about my mortality at an age I don’t think people should have to think about death.”

“But even going through all this, I feel better than before,” she says. “I have this whole new appreciation for every day just because I feel like it can be taken away at any moment.”

“I just had a greater appreciation for life, which I think makes me feel better, even though I’m still sick, I’m still suffering from all the side effects of chemotherapy. I’m grateful to be alive and I want to maximize it as much as I can,” adds Seifert.

One of the worst side effects, she says, was dealing with neuropathy — nerve damage that often leads to numbness or tingling in the hands and feet.

“Since September, after the colon resection, I haven’t been able to feel my legs or the tips of my fingers. It’s hard to pick things up. I can’t write with a pencil. I can’t run because I can’t feel my legs,” says Seifert, noting that it may be something he faces for the rest of his life.

After Seifert posted a video of her cancer journey online, she received an influx of comments from people close to her in the Denver area sharing similar stories. From there, she was able to build a community of people who were either going through cancer treatment or were survivors.

“I had a lot of side effects and bad hospitalizations because of the chemo and my port and that stuff. People were invested, but they also related to my experience. There was a lot of community to be found there,” Seifert says.

With some of her friends, she made a short film about her experience, which forced her to look “a little more seriously” at what she went through.

“It will be very helpful for me to reflect on everything that happened. I stayed athletic and didn’t really think about it. I was in survival mode,” she says. “My partner and I recently had a conversation about how tired I am all the time because of chemotherapy. It sparked a conversation about what this treatment has meant to our relationship.”

“I thought a lot about death last year. I came to accept death as a concept. I got an acceptance that when it’s time, it’s time and to make the most of everything because I could die in a car accident tomorrow,” she continues. “Nothing is promised. It made me appreciate everything around me more. But it was also scary to think about dying at 25.”

While she knows “there’s no reason anyone should ever get cancer or ever go through this,” she still tries to find “a silver lining.”

“It makes me want to travel more. It makes me want to take advantage of more opportunities,” she says. “I always put my job and my savings and all that. I’ve continued to work throughout treatment, and now I’m like, let’s go to Japan for two weeks and go skiing. I’m taking every opportunity I can to do what I want to do and explore what I want to explore.”

Read the original article on People