At 42, Danielle Ripley-Burgess is a three-time colon cancer survivor. She was first diagnosed at 17then at 25 and then again at 39, which makes her part of the trend in colorectal cancer rates an increase among young people. The Kansas City, Missouri mom shared her story with TODAY.com and urged others to speak out about their symptoms.
I had cancer that everyone thought old people had.
Towards the end of my 8th grade, when I was 14, I started seeing blood stains in my stools when I went to the bathroom. I didn’t know what was happening. I downplayed it and tried to convince myself it wasn’t a big deal.
I thought, I’m eating something red and that’s probably what I’m seeing. So I went on a “no red foods diet” and stopped eating anything red in color: from candy to pizza, salsa and raspberry popsicles.
It took me a while to accept that I was seeing blood, but I always hid it from almost everyone I knew. I was already embarrassed by the changes that occurred during puberty, so on top of that, it was just too much. I didn’t want to be sick and I didn’t feel sick at first.
But it was nagging at me, so about a year or two later I mentioned something to my mom. We looked it up online and saw it was probably hemorrhoids. She said blood in the stool could also indicate something more serious, but that was something for people who were my grandparents’ age.
I thought “great, I have hemorrhoids” and moved on with my life. In high school, seeing blood in stools became completely normal, even though it became redder, darker, and scarier. Eventually I had severe stomach pain and was starting to get tired. I couldn’t play volleyball anymore. I just wanted to go home and sleep.
When I was 16, I told my boyfriend that I thought I needed to see a doctor, but I didn’t tell him the details. My mother overheard one of our conversations and realized I was still seeing blood. She told my father and they called the doctor, who immediately sent me to a gastroenterologist.
Just weeks after I turned 17, I was diagnosed with stage 3 colon cancer. I underwent chemotherapy, radiation, and surgery to remove the tumor. I also had surgery to move my ovaries to my stomach to protect them from radiation. Doctors wanted to save the ovaries to preserve hormonal function, but by breeding them, I could no longer conceive naturally.
I thought I had beaten cancer. I had colonoscopies every three years, and after one, I woke up and saw the exact same look on the doctor’s face that I had seen eight years before. He saw a polyp which later turned out to be cancerous. I had no symptoms. At 25, I had stage 1 colon cancer.
Mentally and emotionally, it was much harder this time. I was really angry about a lot of things, but deep down, just angry at God – how could you let this happen to me again? At this point, I was married, I had a house, I was working on a career, we were talking about adopting a child. Suddenly I realized I could lose all these things.
I have no family history and there was no explanation at first, but I found out I had Lynch syndrome, a genetic disorder that puts you at higher risk of several cancers, with colon and rectal cancers topping the list. I am the first in my family to have the mutation.
Knowing that the next target for Lynch syndrome would be either uterine cancer or ovarian cancer, I had a hysterectomy to prevent this.
Part of my cancer story is a story of infertility. Adopting our daughter became our way to start a family. She is 16 now and we also adopted a 5 year old son.
I also had a subtotal colectomy, which removed all but about 13 inches of my colon. If you no longer have a colon, your risk decreases.
But in 2023, during my monitoring — which included annual colonoscopies — my doctor discovered polyps and said, “It looks like the cancer is trying to come back.” »
I decided to have a permanent ileostomy, where the small remaining piece of colon was removed. They sent him to pathology and found stage 1 colon cancer – luckily it was all contained in that tissue.
I wasn’t expecting it, but I wasn’t completely shocked either. Living with Lynch syndrome, I am always aware that this is a possibility. It’s always on my mind: could this symptom or pain or strange thing happening in my body be something major?
At this point, I’ve had just about every surgery possible to prevent cancer. I no longer have a colon. I may never get colorectal cancer again, and that was a relief.
More and more young people like me are suffering from colorectal cancer.
If I could go back and tell my younger self anything, it would be: don’t be self-conscious about your body.
If you see something with your body that is uncomfortable and weird and you’re not yet ready to talk to a doctor, talk to someone, a friend or family member. Don’t sit in that state of: something is wrong with your body and you don’t know what it is. Don’t sit alone. Don’t minimize what you see.
This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.
Gn Health
