A woman who has been given a devastating diagnosis of just a few months to live from a 'preventable' cancer is urging people to do one thing that could save their lives.
Jamie Comer, from San Francisco, was just 47 when a blood test revealed something wasn't quite right.
Medics then broke the news to her that she actually had stage four colon cancer which had metastasized to her liver.
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Speaking to ABC 7News in 2023, Comer explained: "I had 45 tumors on my left side and 12 tumors on my right side and that I would likely die in three to six months."
Comer was put through chemotherapy, enduring rounds between eight to 11 hours for three days every other week in a bid to fight back against the aggressive cancer.
To this end, an infusion pump was also implanted in her abdomen to deliver the chemo directly to her liver, which gave her 'low energy' and made her feel 'vaguely nauseous.'
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"I feel like my insides are burning up. I feel hot," she said at the time.
Yet despite her terminal diagnosis back in 2016, Comer has defied the odds, only recently moving into hospice care from her home almost 10 years later.
Speaking about how she managed to survive for so long, Comer also said: "The power of having children. I had an eight-year-old ... I did not have permission to go."
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However, the mom had had to constantly fight, relying on an 'intense' regimen to ward off the cancer as well as 190 rounds of chemo, seven surgeries and between 60 to 70 scans.
Now, she's been taken off chemo as of last month, receiving only medication to help manage with the pain.
"It wasn't a difficult decision. There were no treatment options that were working and the chemo was making me sicker so I couldn't recover," she explained.
"Do I fight really hard or do I just give in?" she also said she's asked the hospice nurse.
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Comer's story comes as she continues to raise awareness to colon screenings, urging others that an earlier colonoscopy would have probably saved her life.
When Comer had her blood test at the age of 47, at the time the recommended age for a colonoscopy was 50.
"Subsequent to that, the screening age was moved to 45. If that had been the case and I had been screen, I would have been inconvenienced for maybe 18 months but it would not have been a death sentence."
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"I'm really a pain in the butt. I keep saying the same thing - screen early, what about this, try this," she added.
Colorectal cancer remains the third-leading cause of cancer-related deaths in men and the fourth leading cause in women in the US, expecting to claim the lives of around 52,900 this year according to the American Cancer Society.
This is despite the fact diagnoses has dropped since the mid-1980s due to an influx of screenings and changes to lifestyle-related risk factors. However, the charity warns rates have actually increased by 2.5 percent per year from 2012 to 2021 for people younger than 50.
Medical experts continue to advise people who have a history of colon cancer in their family to get screened at 40 or, if the family member received their diagnosis at 40, to get screened at 30.
If you’ve been affected by any of these issues and want to speak to someone in confidence, contact the American Cancer Society on 1-800-227-2345 or via their live chat feature, available 24/7 every day of the year.
Topics: Cancer, Colon cancer, Health, US News
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