This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Jenna Scott a 39-year-old Chief Operating Officer in Peach Tree Corners, Georgia. The following has been edited for length and clarity.
For the first three decades of my life, everything was great. I was a cheerleader in middle school and college, where I met my husband.
We got married in 2015 and our friends would say we were living a fairytale.
I got pregnant with our son, Cameron, that year and I thought, “Oh, how could life get any better?”
But in 2017, at the age of 31, I was diagnosed with stage four colorectal cancer.
The doctor said my symptoms were related to my pregnancy
My symptoms started when I was around seven or eight months pregnant. I told my obstetrician I had really bad abdominal cramping and rectal and vaginal bleeding, but he said not to worry because they were pregnancy symptoms.
It was my first pregnancy so I thought: “This is what pregnancy is like, I can handle it, I’m tough.”
My abdominal pain didn’t go away after I gave birth and my obstetrician put it down to the C-section. Cameron was my main concern. I was always tired, too, but didn’t want to complain.
I saw a doctor who gave me some IBS pills and said he’d refer me to a GI specialist if they didn’t work.
They didn’t, so he sent me to a GI specialist who told me: “Why are you in my office? You’re way too young.”
On June 29, 2017, just over a year after Cameron was born, I had a colonoscopy and woke up to four nurses, my doctor, and my husband in the room.
The doctor told me: We found cancer.
Cancer doesn’t run in my family and I didn’t understand how it could have happened to me at 31.
Stage four cancer changed everything
I was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer. The oncologist said they couldn’t see the cancer that well on the CT scan because I had so much muscle and so little fat.
It didn’t make sense and I shut down. My husband and mom were more emotional than me.
After that appointment, we collected my son from day care and I just held him. He’d just turned one: how could I process the thought that he might not know me?
Life quickly became full of doctors’ appointments and scans, and my employer took away my larger projects so I could focus on my health. I had worked hard to get them so it felt unfair but in hindsight, they were right.
I started chemo on August 9. It took eight hours every other week at the hospital, then a 46-hour drip at home with a portable pack. I had insomnia, hallucinations, and anxiety. I would look at the baby monitor and see one of my coworkers in my son’s crib, or tarantulas crawling across my hands.
I had 11 months of chemo, stopped for a few months, then was told it had spread to my colon, liver, and lungs, so I started another 11 months of treatments and surgeries.
By 2021, I was on a lower “maintenance” chemo dose to keep the cancer at bay. I would take six chemo pills every day, alongside various others, which made me very sick and kept me at home when I wanted to be present for my son.
One day I decided I just didn’t want to do it anymore and my doctor said I could stop for a while. But by Christmas 2022, the cancer was in my lymph nodes. I waited until the new year to start treatment so I could have my storybook Christmas.
Even with insurance, medical bills were a nightmare
I had to pay a lot out of pocket that first year before my insurance provider could reimburse me, including $500 upfront for the colonoscopy. That was a lot alongside expenses like our mortgage and day care costs.
My husband’s insurance plan was really good but I started having issues a couple of years in when appointments were back-to-back and I was racking up bills of about $3,000 a month. The hospital kept calling me for payments and we considered selling our house and moving in with our parents.
Eventually, my husband’s friends encouraged him to set up a GoFundMe page, which raised $17,000 in just a few hours while I was having surgery, and $30,000 in 17 days. I felt betrayed at first, but my mom helped me see it as a blessing.
My son looks out for me
Seeing my son grow up has been keeping me together this whole time. We’ve been reading kids’ books about cancer and emotions to Cameron for years and he’s starting to understand what’s happening.
Once he asked me, “Mommy, can you die from cancer?” and I froze. I didn’t know what to say. He cries at night about it, holds me, and tells me he doesn’t want me to leave. But he takes good care of me. When my hair was longer, he used to put it in a ponytail for me and put chapstick on my lips.
Today, my cancer status is “non-detectable.” I have chemo every four weeks and expect to be on this maintenance regime indefinitely, an idea I struggled to cope with at first.
I work full time, which is hard as I’ve had a lot of side effects. I’ve passed out a few times, my body overheats so badly I have to take off all my clothes, I feel like I have to vomit but my body won’t do it, and I barely sleep for days at a time. This is my life now.
I try to stay busy to take my mind off the tough treatments. When I have chemo on Fridays and Cameron, who’s nine, has a baseball game on Saturday morning, I’m there with my portable pack just doing everything that I can, even though I feel tired and nauseous and vomit a lot.
And I’m so grateful to our family and friends who still come over to cook and clean for us after eight years. But because the cancer treatment side effects are cumulative, having a happy life is really hard.
I’m hoping I have a long life ahead of me, but I don’t want to be on this treatment forever and am perpetually crossing my fingers that science can discover new treatments.
I’ve realized the things I used to stress about are completely manageable and I have so many blessings. I tell everybody that life is good, it’s just how you look at it.
I want young people to understand that they’re not untouchable. You need to get regular check-ups and advocate for yourself.
Correction: June 23, 2025 — An earlier version of this story misstated Cameron’s age. He is nine years old.
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