After seeing blood in the toilet bowl perhaps a half-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 thought, ‘Oh, this doesn’t seem right,'” he said.

Read-Barrow was 39 years old at the time and a busy father of two children. He traveled regularly to London for his public relations work, which involved a lot of socializing and a lot of drinking, but overall his lifestyle was healthy, he said.

The doctor told her she had no 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 expected was for it to be cancer because obviously I was 39,” said Read-Barrow, now 43.

Cases of colon cancer in younger people have increased since the mid-1990s, and it is now the deadliest form of the disease among those under 50 years of age. 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 this trend, and early research suggests that cases of colon cancer in young people may be related to our modern environment.

The only young man in the hospital room.

Read-Barrow received chemotherapy for three months, followed by surgery in April 2022 to remove the tumor from his colon.

In the hospital, Read-Barrow felt isolated. “There were a lot of good kids in the room, but it was a little depressing because I was a lot younger than the others,” he said.

Read-Barrow remained in hospital for two weeks to recover. “I got really sick because I couldn’t eat anything,” he said.

The day his wife turned 40 he was sent home, but he could barely get out of bed for two weeks. “My body felt like I’d been hit by a bus,” he said.

Three weeks later, she began another three-month round of chemotherapy, but treatment was stopped when a scan revealed the cancer had spread to her liver. In June 2022, he underwent surgery to remove the diseased part of the organ.

The operation was a success, but soon after Read-Barrow learned that the cancer had also spread to his lungs. He underwent a few rounds of a nonsurgical treatment called ablation, which destroys cancer cells using extreme heat or cold. It killed some cancer cells, but others remained.

“From that point on, the most important thing was to ‘manage’ it rather than cure it,” he said.

Stage 4 cancer as a chronic disease

Read-Barrow is following a treatment plan that has prevented the disease from progressing. “I’m hopeful that things can change and there are new treatments, but right now I’m in stage four,” she said.

It’s easier emotionally to focus on managing your disease, Read-Barrow said, than to live with the uncertainty you experienced during the first year after being diagnosed. “I guess I feel a little more like I know where I stand,” he said.

He manages his schedule around a three-month chemotherapy cycle with and three months without chemotherapy. When she’s not receiving chemotherapy, she goes to the gym four to five times a week, works on her online business, and hangs out with friends and family. During the first and second weeks of chemotherapy, you mainly stay at home.

Although he would change his health if he could, this has given him a new perspective on life.

“I’m actually thinking, let’s do what we want to do, let’s prioritize the people we want to see, and let’s not waste time doing things we don’t want to do,” Read-Barrow said.