Introduction

I was hoping to have more of a concrete idea of what to write about, and statistics, when I began this blog. But now I just want to start writing it, so hopefully I'll have statistics for you soon. I was diagnosed with two stage III colorectal cancers one week following my 36th birthday. Technically, rectal and colon cancers, but I generally told people that I had colon cancer, more because I wasn't ready to process the fact that I had two cancers. At first it seemed odd to me, and to others, that someone my age would have colon cancer, a cancer more generally associated with people age fifty and beyond. But as I moved forward, I discovered that there were many other people in their twenties and thirties and forties with colorectal cancer, and they were being diagnosed at late stages, because like me, they didn't know what the symptoms were, and weren't getting colonoscopies, because of their young age. So this blog is an entry point for me, to try to inform others about colorectal cancer, at all ages, and to work towards developing a more formal, informative website, and materials. Eventually I'd really like to find a way to get younger people in for colonoscopies. Treatment for colon cancer is expensive, and it seems the insurance companies would end up saving money by funding colonoscopies in people younger than the current recommended age for them, instead of having to pay the hundreds of thousands of dollars it costs to treat them. More than that, it would save lives.

So this is just a start point. But stay tuned for more....