A 26-year-old woman was bloated and thought she had hemorrhoids. She was diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer.

• She thought the bloating and rectal bleeding were due to hemorrhoids or gastrointestinal problems.

• She was diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer and is undergoing treatment.

For about a year, Mariana wasn’t sure what to make of her bloating.

Sometimes she assumed it was just part of being a woman with a regular menstrual cycle. She also had several friends with Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis, thinking she had similar gastrointestinal issues.

Then, in April, she noticed blood in her stool – one of the most common symptoms of colon cancer in young people.

“That alarmed me a little bit,” Tata, 26, told Business Insider. When it didn’t go away for a month, she called her primary care doctor, who thought the hemorrhoids might be the cause, but sent Dad for an abdominal scan just in case, since she’d also been diagnosed with anemia a few years before and suddenly had worsening symptoms.

The scan revealed a 20cm tumor on one of her ovaries. Dad was sent to Syracuse Hospital in New York, where more tests led to a diagnosis of stage 4 colon cancer, with the cancer spreading to her abdominal wall. Shortly thereafter, both of her ovaries and fallopian tubes were removed, leaving Dad unable to have biological children.

Dad, still in treatment, remembers being shocked. “When you’re young, you don’t think it’s cancer,” she said. “Colon cancer was not on my mind at all.”

Cancer changed his life plans

Before her diagnosis, Dad and her boyfriend discussed their future: having children and buying a house together.

Plans changed when she needed surgery to remove the large mass on her right ovary, which she soon learned had also damaged her left ovary. “There was no option to save my eggs,” Tata said, meaning she would have to carry donated eggs or embryos through IVF.

For now, Dad said, that means she’s giving up on the idea of ​​having children. Knowing she would have to pay for the cancer treatment made her rethink other plans, like the house.

Before she hit her deductible, she was “scrounging together” as much as she could to pay for ER visits, CT scans, abdominal scans and blood tests. Although she said some friends helped set up a GoFundMe to help with costs, she’s still paying a hospital bill from the summer that cost nearly $1,000 and anticipates future treatment costs.

“It’s really tough, especially in your 20s and 30s when you’re planning to use your money for something else and then you get cancer,” she said. “You have to reevaluate what you’re actually spending your money on.”

Dividing time between her boyfriend and parents

Dad splits his time between two homes based on her chemotherapy schedule. The night before her next treatment, she leaves the apartment she shares with her boyfriend to go to her parents’ house. Because her boyfriend works and her parents are retired, she can get more round-the-clock care there.

“My mom is the one nursing me back to health, basically,” Dad said, giving her round-the-clock anti-nausea medicine. “My family have been absolutely amazing and I think the fact that I’m so strong comes from them because they carry me every time I can’t anymore.”

Dad, who had parts of his colon removed before starting chemotherapy, feels he is coming back better from treatments than other cancer patients he has spoken to. On the alternate weeks she doesn’t have chemotherapy, she said she almost forgets she has cancer, focusing more on getting her strength back.

But the days she’s off the chemo pump are brutal, usually lasting from Wednesday to Monday.

“It kind of smacks you in the face and reminds you every couple of weeks that you have to go through this and you’re sick,” she said. “It’s kind of my new reality.”

Making sense of her diagnosis

Dad is currently considered stable with no progression of the cancer while he continues his chemotherapy treatment.

“My oncologist expects me to go back to work in February, which is really nice,” she said. Dad, who is still employed as an enrollment operations nurse at his alma mater, Utica University, suffered short-term and long-term disability during treatment.

She hopes her treatments will become more spread out after chemotherapy, helping her get back closer to the routine she had before her diagnosis.

She said connecting with other colon cancer patients through the Colorectal Cancer Alliance and a Facebook group helped her feel more comfortable sharing her experience.

“At the beginning of my diagnosis, I didn’t know what to do with myself,” she said. “I felt so alone and I wasn’t ready to talk to people.” Connecting with others made it easier to deal with her ongoing treatment.

Her advice: Get a second opinion

It also made her more aware of the rising rates of cancer among young people.

“I feel like young people are on the fringes of the forgotten who are dealing with this,” she said. Given how subtle the symptoms of colon cancer can be, she hopes other young people take action if they feel a change in their bodies.

“You go to the doctor, no matter how big or small it is,” she said. “Because what I thought was a small thing turned into a very big thing.”

She also emphasized standing up for yourself and even seeking a second opinion, because “not many doctors jump when you see stool bleeding.” In her case, she is grateful that hers took immediate action.

“If my doctor didn’t recommend a CT scan or an abdominal scan, I don’t know where I’d be right now,” she said.

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