After he saw blood in the toilet bowl maybe half a dozen times over the course of a few weeks, Russ Read-Barrow visited the doctor.
He didn’t have any other symptoms, but something felt off, he told Business Insider. “I was like, ‘Oh, this doesn’t seem right,'” he said.
Read-Barrow was 39 at the time, and a busy dad of two. He regularly traveled to London for his job in PR, which involved a lot of socializing and a fair amount of drinking, but overall his lifestyle was healthy, he said.
The doctor told him he didn’t have signs of hemorrhoids or other common causes of rectal bleeding, and sent Read-Barrow for a colonoscopy. The results suggested he had colon cancer, which a biopsy later confirmed.
“The last thing I was expecting was for it to be cancer because, obviously, I was 39,” Read-Barrow, now 43, said.
Cases of colon cancer in younger people have been rising since the mid-90s, and it is now the deadliest cancer form of the disease for under-50s. Rectal bleeding is the most common sign of early-onset colon cancer, followed by abdominal pain and changes in bowel habits.
Scientists are trying to understand the cause of the trend, and early research suggests young colon cancer cases may be linked to our modern environment.
The only young person on the hospital ward
Read-Barrow had chemotherapy for three months, followed by surgery in April 2022 to remove the tumor on his colon.
In hospital, Read-Barrow felt isolated. “There was a load of nice old boys on the ward, but it was just a bit depressing because I was so much younger than everyone else,” he said.
Read-Barrow stayed in hospital for two weeks to recover. “I got really ill because I couldn’t eat anything,” he said.
On the day of his wife’s 40th birthday he was sent home, but was barely able to leave his bed for two weeks. “My body just felt like it had been hit by a bus,” he said.
Three weeks later, he started another three-month round of chemotherapy, but the treatment was cut short when a scan revealed that the cancer had spread to his liver. In June 2022, he had surgery to remove the diseased part of the organ.
The operation was a success, but shortly after, Read-Barrow learned that the cancer had also spread to his lungs. He underwent a few rounds of a non-surgical treatment called ablation, which destroys cancer cells using either heat or extreme cold. It removed some cancerous cells, but others remained.
“From that point it became more ‘manage it’ rather than cure it,” he said.
Stage 4 cancer as a chronic illness
Read-Barrow is on a treatment plan that has prevented the disease from advancing. “I am hopeful that things may change and that there will be new treatments, but at the moment I am stage four,” he said.
It’s easier emotionally to focus on managing his illness, Read-Barrow said, than living with the uncertainty he experienced during the first year after he was diagnosed. “It feels a bit more like I know where I stand, I suppose,” he said.
He manages his schedule around a three-month on, three-month off chemotherapy cycle. When he’s not having chemo, he goes to the gym four to five times a week, works on his online business, and hangs out with friends and family. During the first and second weeks of chemo, he mainly stays home.
Although he would change his health if he could, it has given him a new perspective on life.
“I’m like, actually, let’s just do what we want to do, prioritize the people that we want to see, and not waste time doing stuff that we don’t want to do,” Read-Barrow said.
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