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My name is Brooke and I'm 32 years old. I was
diagnosed with stage four colon cancer at 29
I grew up in oklahoma and moved to Los Angeles in 1996 for law school.
I just was going about my
living uh... ambitious, trying to decide whether it wants to become a
partner in a law firm and that was like my biggest worry
um, to ...
fighting for my life, which is now everything
I was diagnosed in september 2004. I was having all of these
issues with
gas and bloating, just going to the bathroom numerous times a day,
having bleeding,
one of the main symptoms of colon cancer.
I saw my oncologist on that monday, and I said
what, what stage is this, and he said, well, this is stage four
and i said stage four, is there a stage five? And he said, no, there's just stage 1-4.
What Stage 4 means is that
the colon cancer has essentially moved from its primary location which is the
colon to a distant organ
for me, it was the liver.
And eventually it moved also to both lungs and as a result I've had numerous
surgeries in those areas and chemotherapies to try to
help fix the problem.
You can go through hell and back
and your body is just amazing in that they can recover and it can
regenerate and it can get better and you can get better.
And if you just
you take it day by day, you don't -- you can't -- let that cancer like, you can't
look at the huge
picture. You really can't, because that's too big, it's too big, it's bigger than
all of this, and it's too overwhelming.
So, you take it day by day. You find happiness that you can find each day you
have your family with you.
People that bring happiness to you, people who aren't toxic and you fight
You have to. You don't have a choice. You just fight.