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My name is Danielle Burgess and I am a 29-year-old colorectal cancer survivor. I have survived
colorectal cancer twice and I have Lynch Syndrome. I was diagnosed with colon cancer at age 17
and in Lynch syndrome is common to be diagnosed younger than what's typically 50 or even a
little under 50, but 17 a still rarely young. Now, I did not really have many of the common
symptoms of colon cancer at the time other than blood in the stool. I would see bleeding
quite frequently and assumed it was a host of other things, stress, red foods, things
I was eating like that. At one point, I had assumed it was hemorrhoids just based on my
internet research, but at the end after several years of bleeding, doctors rush me and when
I heard about what was going on and it was determined that I did have colon cancer. I
was a teen at the time and so my experience was really different. I was going to chemo
and surgery in the midst of doing homework from home and shopping for my prom dress,
so those were the things that I was really looking forward to just getting on to life,
I was junior in high school, so I just wanted to go back to school and join my friends,
so not beating it or being a life long cancer patient just really never cross my mind because
I had so much to look forward to that I just went to every chemo and radiation treatment,
just trying to breeze through it. I was diagnosed with colon cancer a second time when I was
25. It came out of nowhere. When I was diagnosed at 17, we just thought it was a fluke. I had
received genetic testing. At that time, we did not know I had Lynch syndrome, we did
not see any genetic markers that made us think it was ever coming back and eight years later,
I had no reason to think it had come back. When I was diagnosed at second time, I did
not even actually have any symptoms. My doctor found a polyp in a colonoscopy and that's
kind of got the ball rolling to test it and then have surgery and realized that I did
indeed have colon cancer again it was stage 1, so we caught it early. So, my second experience
was very different than my first whereas my first I was a teenager, experiencing stage
3 colon cancer, so I had all of the treatments, surgery, chemo, radiation for the first occurrence,
but then my second occurrence, the cancer was contained and it was treated with surgery.
So, my two experiences were very different, but I will also say experiencing cancer as
a teen versus a 20 something was also very different and while physically it was a harder
treatment as a teenager going through all of the cancer treatment steps. Emotionally,
it was a lot harder when I had second one. Being 25, I kind of realized why cancer had
been so scary to my parents and all their friends when I was so young because all the
sudden it was not just this annoyance that did not let me go to school and hangout with
my friends. All the sudden, I realized that this is a life threatening disease and its
come back. By second diagnosis, I was married. We are starting to talk about starting a family,
adopting a baby, and I kind of realized that implication cancer has when you are a little
older and adult. So, it is a very different experience in between the first and the second
one. When I was diagnosed with my second cancer, doctors suspected that I did have Lynch syndrome
even more and at that point, they encouraged me to take some proactive steps even though
I did not have the official Lynch syndrome diagnosis yet. A few years later, I underwent
a total hysterectomy to remove all the female reproductive organs that were also at risk
because of the Lynch syndrome and now I followup the doctors to have yearly colonoscopies,
I receive upper scopes every now and then to check out the stomach and I am always receiving
blood work, CAT scans, and tests on all the other organs involved within the Lynch syndrome
diagnosis.
For an interactive tool to learn more about your colon cancer and your personalized treatment
options, go to MyColonCancerCoach.org.