Ashlie Frank
Patient/Survivor
Rectal
Age at Diagnosis: 28
"Getting a colonoscopy may seem like a large inconvenience but a year full of scary surgeries, treatments, and feeling mentally and physically ill is so much worse. Listen to your body- your life and well being could literally depend on it."
I was living in French Canada with my husband and had always had IBS type symptoms but had started experiencing a small amount of blood int stool. I went im for appointments on and off for eight months and was diagnosed with food sensitivities, hemorrhoids, and anal fissures before I finally paid to go private for a colonoscopy. They found a large tumor right near my anus and I was sent in to a specialist the following week and told I had cancer.
I was so shocked that I don’t even really remember the first few days of my diagnosis and I remember trying to explain it to my parents over FaceTime and they kept saying “okay so precancerous cells what do we do now” I had to tell them over and over that I had actual cancer because they were in such disbelief.
When getting all my scans to stage the rectal cancer doctors also discovered that I had completely unrelated papillary thyroid cancer. So I had a year of treatment for both separate cancers simultaneously.
I was sent in for genetic testing and it was discovered that I am positive for CHEK2 gene mutation which explains the multiple cancers but still not why I got rectal cancer so young with no family history.
