Just coming back now after my stage 2 surgery...

Here's the thing, my symptoms didn't even seem to be colon or cancer related. I was having fatigue, out of breath, tired all the time.

Not unusual for a dude with 2 heart attacks and congestive heart failure, but the blood work was showing anemia, low red blood cell count, low hemoglobin, small red blood cells.

Something was chewing up the blood, but it wasn't clear what.

Enter the colonoscopy/endoscopy... 17 polyps, 2 of which unusually large (20mm and 30mm). But NOT cancerous. Not even pre-cancer.

Rule of thumb is anything more than 5 or bigger than 5mm, you get re-checked 6 months later.

6 months later... 6 new polyps, and a 20mm monster that was full blown invasive stage 2 cancer.

Went under the knife 2/19, they pulled my sigmoid colon and all the related lymph nodes. If the cancer got into the lymph system, that's stage 3 and cause for chemo.

Well, they got it all! No stage 3! But I've kinda been rolling around in bed ever since. 2 more weeks of recovery.

I got diagnosed last year at 30 years old. I had lower abdominal pain that lasted a little over a month that I figured was IBS from a traumatic life event that recently happened. It was slowly improving until one day I woke up in extreme abdominal pain. There wound up being a mass at the very start of my large intestine.

The doctors found no obvious reasons as to why it happened- no family history, no substance abuse, no excessive energy drink or alcohol consumption. I now make a large effort to cut out as much processed food in my diet as I can.

Got a test coming up in about a month for the first time closing on 48. It's such an obnoxious thing to try and deal with because nobody wants to talk about why their guts and ass are all messed up.

I think the best way around it is to recognize that it's just like any other medical thing. Throat hurts you go get it looked at, why not the other end of the path too.

Leading cause of cancer death for under 50's. Heart disease reigns supreme last I checked for untimely demises.

Rectal bleeding, bloody stool, and narrow poops. You might also get intermittent constipation with no apparent cause, and a feeling like something is constricting your intestine.

Unfortunately it sounds like this isn't because other cancers have fallen, just that this has increased.

Got my first colonoscopy coming in two weeks.
Fingers crossed.

arnt alot of people found to have the cancer syndrome, like lynch since cancer found under 50+ are often people with genetic mutation for it, rather than sporadic caused like from red meat, cigarettes,,,,etc.

Some populations are more at risk than others. Alaska Natives have the highest documented colorectal cancer mortality in the world, but Siegel said that, because the total number of Alaska Natives is so small, it’s hard to get funding to study why.

I don't doubt that it is difficult to get funding (especially now), but seems kind of dumb.

If anything such a small population in a relatively isolated environment seems like it would allow researchers to better control variability. Unless it's strictly a genetic risk factor, it would seem that any significant environmental risk factors they find could then just be helpful when determining what risk factors to consider in bigger heterogenous populations, right?