When Jenna Scott, then 31, was about seven months pregnant, she began to experience worrying symptoms: rectal bleeding, nausea and abdominal pain. Her doctor assured her that hemorrhoids and discomfort are only part of pregnancy. When her symptoms did not go away after she gave birth, she got the shocking news: she had stage 4 colorectal cancer.
“I do not understand how it happened to me and anyone my age,” Scott, now 34, of Norcross, Georgia, said TODAY. “Cancer was not in my world.”
Scott shares her story to raise awareness of colorectal cancer in young people of color.
“I’m really keen to make my community, the Black community, heard, because we’re not really talking about it,” she said. “We are not really going the way we should to the doctors and access to health care is not that easy.”
Pregnancy symptoms never go away
When Scott started getting nauseous and bleeding in 2017 while she was pregnant, she was worried. But her OB-GYN put her at ease by saying what she is experiencing is normal.
“He said, ‘Well, it just comes with the area of pregnancy,’ ‘Scott recalls.’ I just wore it. Until my son was born and nothing stopped. I was still in pain. ‘
She has tried different types of contraceptives and still feels bad. Shortly after her son Cameron’s first birthday, she went to her primary care physician, who listened to her concerns, did blood work, which was normal, and recommended that she visit a gastrointestinal doctor who ‘ ordered a colonoscopy.
“I told him what’s going on, and he just looked at me and said, ‘You’re fit. You’re really young. We do not know what it is, but let’s just rule out something serious. “That’s why I did the colonoscopy,” she said.
When she woke up from the procedure, the doctor told her what he had found, and she did not believe it.
“He told me I had cancer,” Scott said. “We had built up such a good relationship up to that point, and I giggled and laughed … and said, ‘Seriously? “I thought he was playing and then he just had a straight face. And he said, “I’ll never joke about something like that.” ‘
Then Scott felt ‘numb’. While the doctors initially thought they had contracted it early, Scott later learned she had stage 4 cancer.
“Things go in one ear and the other out,” she said. The doctor said, ‘Well, your situation is extremely rare because we can not even get the best photos on your CT scan because you do not have enough body fat. ”
It feels especially frustrating to Scott. She was athletic, young and ate healthy food – everything she thought would protect her from colorectal cancer.
‘I know it sounds funny, but I got mad at my body. I was like, ‘What are you doing to me?’ ”She said. “I was like, ‘I take such good care of you and you treat me like that.’ ‘I did not fit into the’ bubble ‘of people who would normally fit in with these kinds of diseases. ”
Colorectal cancer in young adults
While colorectal cancer remains rare in young adults, the American Cancer Society estimates that approximately 18,000 people under 50 will be diagnosed with colorectal cancer by 2020. Since the mid-1980s, there has been an increase in colon cancer in adults 20 to 39 and people between the ages of 40-54 have been increasing since the mid-1990s, the organization says.
Black people experience colorectal cancer at about 20% higher than non-Hispanic white people and, according to the American Cancer Society, have death rates that are nearly 40% higher. The organization SurvivorNet has started Closing the Gap to raise awareness of racial differences in terms of cancer diagnosis, treatment and survival.
Symptoms of colorectal cancer include:
- Rectal bleeding
- Iron deficiency
- Stomach pain
- Narrow stools
- An urge to defecate
- Unexplained weight loss
Share her story to help others
Scott, who originally shared her story with SurvivorNet, felt it was important to share her experience so that other young people would not feel so alone. At support groups, she is often the youngest person there. She spends time mentoring younger people with colorectal cancer to help them through the experience.
“If you go for your chemotherapy infusion, there is no one your age,” she said. “It’s just hard when you do not really have someone who looks like you or is your age, and you can ask, ‘Well, how did you handle that?’ ‘
After her initial diagnosis, Scott underwent a rigorous chemotherapy treatment and she also underwent surgery that removed a foot from her colon, two parts of her liver and her gallbladder. She developed a rare side effect where contaminated fluid accumulated in her chest, back and abdomen and had to be allowed to drain.
“It was difficult,” she said. “I would be in the bath maybe five times a day, because the hot water was my only relief from the terrible pain.”
She completed chemotherapy, but nine months later the cancer returned and it spread to her liver and lungs. Scott had severe chemotherapy again and got a rash on her face. She also had targeted therapy and had two surgeries on her liver and lungs. Sometimes the tension and loneliness come to her.
“I’ve only met three other people since I was diagnosed, like young people like me and they are across the country,” Scott said. “It’s a terrible thing and then we do not really have a lot of resources to prevent it from happening.”
Scott spends the rest of her life on chemotherapy to prevent the cancer from spreading. Although she has undergone many treatments with sometimes serious side effects, she remains strong for Cameron and her husband, Derrick.
“There were two things I asked when I was going through the worst: can I please just see my son grow old with my husband?” she said. “That’s what I’m focusing on.”