My Colon Cancer Symptoms #stage4coloncancer #ColonCancer #Cancer

[Music] hey guys welcome back to the od beats cancer channel my name is odie and i'm back today with a new video telling you all about my experience with stage 4 colon cancer a couple months ago i posted a video telling you about my experience about my symptoms and um let's just say the internet came from my birds oh my goodness the audio quality in that video was so horrible so i just wanted to apologize i'm sorry that all you could hear was my birds in the background chirping um i felt like i would be doing you an injustice if i didn't re-film this video so here it is um but before we got started i wanted to show you this is my one-year-old quaker parrot her name is pickles and yes she's half human that's the reason why she's so loud so without further ado um let's get started i want to tell you all about my symptoms leading up to my diagnosis um i felt like my last video was so long that it was kind of hard to sit through it so i'm gonna go ahead and make these videos in segments uh hopefully that's easier to watch and so this particular video is going to talk about my symptoms leading up to my diagnosis on july 31st 2019 thanks for watching let's get started all right guys so let's get started with my most prominent symptom leading up to my diagnosis in 2019 which were stomachaches all right i'm not talking about your regular or discomfort have to go to the bathroom and release type of stomach ache no i'm talking about chills down your back sweating through your clothes stabbing horrible can get a word can get a thought out type of stomach aches um the type that would keep me hunched over the toilet for hours um just searching and searching for some relief okay these symptoms started for me in 2015 when i was pregnant with my youngest daughter helen of course i would tell my ob gyn about my stomach aches i'd say listen i don't know what's making me so sick but i'm having these episodes and i just i can't focus i can't really do anything when when i'm in pain can you help me and she was like well unfortunately there's not much i can do you know it's not uncommon for women to experience gi issues when they're pregnant um we'll keep an eye on it but we're not too concerned they should go away once the baby is born but helen was born and those stomach aches did not stop in fact the frequency of the stomach aches increased and what was so frustrating is that i couldn't figure out what exactly was making me so sick there was no pattern there was no common denominator um i continued to have these stomachaches up until my diagnosis in july 2019 they were frequent sometimes i would be in the bathroom for hours um i wasn't necessarily you know releasing anything i wasn't actually going to the bathroom if you will for lack of a better way to put it but i i just found so much comfort in sitting hunched over in the toilet kind of hugging my abdomen that's where i felt most most comfortable so that's where i would stay and um so yes my most prominent symptom i would say was stomachaches i started to see my physician about it i started to see my primary doctor and i continued to tell him about these stomachaches and to be honest with you all he would do is prescribe me acid reducers or omeprazole or just medications that would coat my stomach in hopes that that would help at no point did a doctor ask me to get screened or refer me to any kind of sonogram ct scan endoscopy nothing like that and quite frankly i didn't know any better i was naive i was you know 27 28 at the time and i and i didn't know any better i didn't think that i needed to have any other screenings done of course hindsight is 20 20 and if i could go back i definitely would have pushed and i would have advocated for myself to get more screenings next symptom that i had leading up to my diagnosis was frequent urination now you're probably like what what does frequent urination have to do with colon cancer well if you had an opportunity to watch my last video you know that i also had cancer in my ovaries so the cancer metastasized from my sigmoid colon uh to my ovaries and i was experiencing frequent urination and when i say frequent urination i mean i was going to the bathroom with a full bladder every 40 minutes 30 minutes it was constant persistent it was waking me up in the middle of the night it was all the time again i thought pregnancy had done that to me i thought you know carrying two two uh babies had just messed my bladder up and i just needed to go more frequently you know um i was wrong the reason for that is because i had two um masses on either side of my ovaries that i guess were pushing down on my bladder and causing me frequent urination now i began having these symptoms in 2018 i remember because i went on a road trip with my brother he went to disney world and we were driving and he was so annoyed with me because every half an hour i had to stop i had to you know ask for the bathroom and ask for the bathroom and that's when i realized jesus is this is not normal you know my mom's giving birth too and she's with us in the car and she doesn't she doesn't have to go to the bathroom so often why am i having to go to the bathroom so often now i didn't really tell my doctor about this i didn't tell anybody about this which is wrong don't don't be like me um part of the reason why i'm filming this video is because i want you to be aware of all these symptoms that i wasn't aware of right now everybody's different and the symptoms can manifest differently but for me frequent urination was one symptom that if i look back i'm like yeah that was definitely there and it was my body screaming for help and i i didn't realize it so frequent urination [Music] okay fatigue feeling tired all the time leading up to my diagnosis in 2019 i remember having such a difficult time waking up in the morning such a difficult time getting through the day such a difficult time working out everything felt like a drag i felt like i was pulling weights you know all day long i was living off of caffeine i was i was just tired you know i remember my commute to work was about 30 minutes and i would have to fight myself to not fall asleep at red lights and um toward the end of my uh toward the end right before i was diagnosed i remember like it not making sense because yes i was working full-time um and yes i am a full-time mother and i have a busy schedule but it made no sense to me because i was sleeping 10 12 hours a night and i would wake up and i was still so tired so fatigued i mean i would have bags under my eyes i needed a coffee all the time which by the way the stuff the the coffee would mess up my stomach and it would upset my stomach but i mean i would just deal with it because i needed the caffeine that badly so um yeah feeling tired and feeling tired all the time like even a good night's sleep wouldn't do it for me all right and last on the list of symptoms was bloating and feeling of illness um i was so bloated toward the end leading up to my diagnosis that it was difficult for me to wear anything that hugged my lower abdomen my pants weren't fitting me anymore i had to wear skirts i had to wear dresses anything that would hug me tight that would hook tight to my body i was just uncomfortable with um i remember one morning which is basically the day that i decided okay enough is enough i need to take myself to the er something is not okay um i was laying flat in my bed and i could see through my pajama pants that i had a lump in my lower abdomen on the left side a little did i know there were tumors which had metastasized to my ovaries so that explains why i had so much loading and so much uncomfortable pain imagine like when you have too much to eat and you feel like you have to unbuckle your pants because you can't catch your breath you just feel so uncomfortable i felt that way a lot leading up to my diagnosis and it was weird because i really wouldn't have too much to eat or i wasn't having anything to eat or it would be early in the morning when there was nothing in my system so there was no true reason for me to be feeling this way um yes that was another major symptom for me guys before i go i also wanted to give a disclaimer i wanted to say that these were my personal symptoms this is the way that the cancer manifested in my body it can be different for everybody some people experience a lot of symptoms while others don't even experience anything at all your best bet is you know to listen to your instinct i wish if i could go back just listen to myself and advocate and say you know what something's not right i need to fight for answers don't ever accept the you're too young you know kind of approach you're not too young look at me i had no family history and here i am sitting on the other side of a stage 4 metastatic colon cancer diagnosis so push push until you get answers you know definitely if you're over 40 or 45 years old and you have family history or you know just out of protocol you know you need to be getting your colonoscopies ask for endoscopies ask for sonograms ask for ct scans you know ask for screenings and if you're not happy with your provider you're not happy with the answers that you're getting go find another one you know push until you get answers all right um i hope that this video was helpful i'm gonna come back with more videos um if you have any questions and you have any topics that you want me to talk about leave them below in the comments and i'll be happy to make more videos thank you so much for watching

Channel: OdySurvives

Views: 231,676

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Id: b0ai_cRyipI

Length: 11min 38sec (698 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 25 2020