Our colon cancers were dismissed as ‘anxiety’ and ‘allergies’

A young woman diagnosed with allergies and anxiety was diagnosed with terminal colon cancer. cancerAfter months of pleading with doctors.

Raquel Aguilar (age 33) Californiahad been suffering from severe diarrhea and blood in her stool on and off for three years, but instead of ordering further tests, her doctor referred her to a psychologist.

Three years later, she went to hospital with severe abdominal pain and was diagnosed with inoperable stage 4 colon cancer, a virtual death sentence.

Other women may be considered “anxious” because they have few symptoms. State of Washington He noticed his stools were a little looser than normal, and had to wait a year and a half to get a colonoscopy, which confirmed he had terminal colon cancer.

As Colon cancer cases in young Americans on the riseDailyMail.com has heard from dozens of patients with similar stories – of doctors overlooking the condition because they were “too young”, while one woman was told she was “melodramatic”.

Now their disease is so advanced that it is too late to treat them.

And oncologists told DailyMail.com that vague symptoms, combined with a lack of testing for younger patients, could be causing many people, especially women, to be left with advanced cancer that is no longer treatable.

By Dr. Daniel Landau, oncologist, hematologist and contributor at the Mesothelioma Center Asbestos.comtold DailyMail.com: “Unfortunately, bowel cancer often develops without many signs or symptoms – if there are any symptoms they are traditionally vague.”

In addition to obvious signs, like blood in the stool, more vague symptoms may include eating less than usual, feeling full quickly, and burping excessively.

These symptoms are often accompanied by irritable bowel syndrome, food intolerances and gas pains,” Dr. Landau said.

“These problems are much more common than colon cancer at a young age, so many doctors don’t think of them as a sign of colon cancer.”

“But not thinking about it means not diagnosing it.”

“In young adults, cancer is often detected later than in other age groups,” Dr. Misagh Karimi, a medical oncologist at City of Hope Cancer Center in California, told DailyMail.com.

“If the cancer has grown or spread when it is discovered, treatment can be complicated.”

According to statistics from the National Cancer Institute, one in four colon cancer patients is diagnosed at stages three and four. However, recent studies have shown that younger patients are 60 percent more likely to be diagnosed with late-stage colon cancer than older patients.

And if the disease begins to spread to vital organs such as the lungs or brain, it can become inoperable.

The NCI estimates that only 16 percent of patients with stage 4 colon cancer will be alive after five years.

In 2019, Aguilar’s roommate noticed she was going to the bathroom more frequently than usual.

“I worked in a restaurant and I thought I was eating too much of the food I was served at work and eating too many processed foods,” she said. Patient Stories.

Soon after, she began adding protein to her diet and taking fiber supplements to ease her digestive problems.

Aguilar was symptom-free for three years, but her gastrointestinal symptoms returned in 2022. Raquel no longer worked at the restaurant, but co-workers asked why she was taking so many bathroom breaks.

But it wasn’t until she noticed she felt full quickly after meals and had blood in her stool that she began to worry.

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But rather than a follow-up exam, her doctor scheduled a psychiatric consultation: “She thought I just had anxiety,” Aguilar says. “I’m sure she’s not the only doctor who would do that.”

Three weeks later, she went to the emergency room with severe pain in her abdomen and lower back, where an MRI and CT scan revealed she had stage 4 colon cancer that had spread to her ovaries, liver, lungs and peritoneum.

“I know it’s classic colon cancer, but I’m very young, female and a minority, so statistically speaking, just fitting into any one of those categories makes it more likely that the test will be denied,” she said.

“Right now they’re saying my cancer is so advanced that they don’t even want to operate. They’re saying it might not be worth it,” she said.

Instead, doctors prescribed her chemotherapy, which they believe she will have to take for the rest of her life — and even then, they believe the chemotherapy will eventually stop working, given how quickly her cancer is progressing.

In late 2019, Lentz noticed a “very small change” in his bowel movements.

“It did loosen up a little bit, which isn’t a big deal for most people, but I hadn’t changed my diet,” Lentz told The Patient Story.

She had just returned from vacation. SpainSo at first, she blamed her digestive problems on the trip, but after a few weeks, the symptoms didn’t go away.

Doctors weren’t initially concerned, believing the changes in her intestines were due to food sensitivities, and tested her for allergies and celiac disease. “It wasn’t considered an emergency. No one considered the possibility of cancer,” she says.

Lentz didn’t have her colonoscopy until February 2021, but doctors immediately yelled, “Bring your husband here right now!”

“I felt my heart drop in my stomach,” she said.

Doctors found a six-centimeter, egg-sized mass in Lenz’s colon and he was diagnosed with stage four colon cancer that had spread to 11 lymph nodes.

Six months of chemotherapy shrank the tumor, but the cancer returned last summer. Lentz is now taking part in a clinical trial of immunotherapy, which she says is “night and day different” compared to chemotherapy.

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“The trial has been amazing. I’m not getting better, but it’s not chemotherapy. I feel like I’ve got my life back with this immunotherapy,” she said. “I’m not sick and tired all the time. I feel like I have a slightly more normal life. It’s really amazing.”

But Lenz’s cancer is still progressing, and his treatment options are dwindling, so it’s unclear what his treatment plan will be after the trial ends.

She now recommends earlier testing and urges patients to seek help as soon as they notice something unusual.

“A lot of people just sit and suffer in silence, and by the time they start to experience bad symptoms, the disease is often already advanced,” she says.

“With cancer occurring more at younger ages, we may need to shift our approach to more aggressively evaluating vague symptoms,” Dr. Landau said.

However, he acknowledged that arranging a colonoscopy can take time, as it requires consultation and preparation time.

“This puts a strain on both patients and doctors and may make them more likely to believe that symptoms are the result of something simpler, like irritable bowel syndrome,” he said.

Dr. Landau noted that new screening methods, such as at-home stool and blood tests, may help detect these cancers earlier, but more research is needed.

“We are seeing a trend towards younger cancer patients and testing is becoming easier, so this trend of cancer being overlooked will improve,” he said.