ZION, Ill. — Jose Santos has struggled with ulcerative colitis (UC) for 16 years starting when he was in college.
"It's no way to live," he said of the autoimmune disorder. "You go to the bathroom maybe 20-30 times a day if it gets really bad. There's lots of bleeding and fatigue and anemia."
Just over a year ago, Santos, who lives in Pleasant Prairie, ordered take-out food and ended up getting food poisoning and what he thought was a flare-up of his UC.
"That ended up taking me to the ER because I was throwing up and just really not feeling well," he said.
Because of his preexisting condition, his doctors did a colonoscopy as a precautionary measure.
"After I woke up from the colonoscopy, the doctor came by my side and said, 'you know, Jose, we found a big mass in your rectal area and we think it could be cancerous.' And that just turned my world upside down," Santos recalls.
Santos was diagnosed with stage 3 colorectal cancer in February 2022. He was just 37 at the time.
Symptoms of UC and colorectal cancer are similar. However, Dr. Pankaj Vashi at City of Hope in Zion, Illinois said there are red flags people should be aware of like "blood in the stool, unexplained abdominal pain, unexplained weight loss, and any other GI symptoms that do not go away."
Those are all signs and symptoms that young people need to pay attention to as well. According to the American Cancer Society, colorectal cancer in patients under the age of 55 nearly doubles from 1995 to 2019 from 11% to 20% of patients.
"Ignoring those symptoms could be very dangerous, and so just get a doctor's opinion. Just get it checked out," Vashi said.
Because of the rise in young people getting colorectal cancer, the recommended age for your first colonoscopy has been lowered from 50 years old to 45 years old. If you have a family history, you may need to get screened earlier.
In many ways, Santos is thankful for the food poisoning that drove him to the hospital. Because of that, he was able to start treating the cancer soon after with chemo, radiation, and surgery to remove his colon. He went into remission in September of 2022.
"As a result of removing my colon, I got rid of ulcerative colitis, so I can finally live now. I don't have to go through those severe side effects that have been hindering me for the last 16 years," Santos said. "I would say the last six, seven months since my surgery have probably been the best months of my life because I have been able to actually, you could say, fly."
But he knows stories involving colorectal cancer don't always have the ending he did, and he wants young people to take symptoms and signs seriously.
"You never think it's going to be you, till it actually hits you," he warned.
And while colonoscopies may sound daunting, he hopes people of all ages will embrace them as an important screening measure.
"It's honestly the easiest thing you could do, it's only like a 15-minute procedure and it's something that's going to save your life. I mean, it did that for me," Santos said.
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