Owen Davies

Story: “I was experiencing some occasional blood while going to the bathroom and some irregularity, which prompted my wife, who was working with a nutrition company at the time calling on oncology clinics, to encourage me to talk to my doctor. I was seeing a pulmonologist regularly for Sarcoidosis, and when we were doing the routine CT scan of my chest, something showed up on my liver that caused my doctor to get very concerned, very fast. He expedited me across the street (strip mall of doctors offices) to catch the gastroenterologist (GI) doctor that he knew in the complex. The GI doctor was on his way to the hospital to do a surgery but snuck me in for a 10 minute consult in order to get a colonoscopy on the calendar for the following Friday.

"I'm a management consultant, and so I travel for work Monday through Thursday. I was finishing up a meeting with a couple of colleagues and both of them announced to each other and the team that they were pregnant, and I got to say, 'I'm having a colonoscopy tomorrow.' It was kind of our running joke after I was diagnosed that the lifestyle of a pregnant woman and a cancer patient was pretty aligned.

"I really was not a fan of the way we were told the outcomes though. Needless to say, the GI doctor who performed my colonoscopy has not been a part of my cancer journey since. I was still coming off of the anesthesia when the doctor came in and very abruptly told my wife and I, paraphrased as 'You have cancer ... Good luck.'

Luckily, living in Houston, we have an incredible network of oncology experts and connections. My neighbor connected me with the Chief of Colorectal Surgery for Methodist Hospital (at the time) for a consult even before the imaging had come back from the colonoscopy, and he brought my case in front of the local cancer board. He then referred me to my current oncologist, Dr. Yuval Raizen, who has been the most empathetic and compassionate doctor I've ever had, and so I'm very thankful to have that experience compared to how it started."

Advice: “Knowledge only helps. Fear is a choice, and being afraid of knowing will not help the overall options or treatments.”