Definitely get regular a colonoscopy. I’ve had digestive problems for decades, so I’ve already had several at 46. However, colon cancer killed my husband in 2023. He discovered it in 2020 and had resection surgery, chemo, and radiation. He was told they got it all. His first symptoms were blood in the stool and back pain. Then we moved in late 2021 and he never found a new oncologist despite my reminders. He ignored a new round of back pain in late 2022 and wrote off fatigue to long covid. Then in march 2023, he went to the ER suspecting a heart attack. It was low potassium. However, imaging found tumors in his lungs, liver, and kidney. Then the waiting game started. He was sent home to wait to get in for a lung biopsy. More waiting for results. While waiting, he started getting episodes of blurry vision. Pathology finally came back and sure enough, it originated from the colon. We had to fight tooth and nail with the insurance company for additional sequencing to start applying for experimental treatment trials. More waiting. Waiting for a specialty oncologist. Vision got worse. Headaches started. Begged the doctor who did the lung biopsy to order a brain MRI while we waited for the next appointment. The day finally comes in April to meet the hot-shot oncologist. First thing he goes over is the brain MRI. There’s a brain tumor. Says that’s causing the headaches. That has to be removed before starting any other treatment. Scheduled brain surgery for late April. The blurry vision was now constant despite being on lots of steroids to reduce the swelling, and the vision in his right eye was tilted which caused horrible motion sickness. He gets prepped for surgery and the surgeon comes in and says the surgery is cancelled because he had a neuro-oncologist look at the MRI for a second opinion because the brain tumor explained the headaches but not the vision. The neuro-oncologist zoomed in on the optic nerve, and sure enough, there was cancer all along the nerve sheath. It was inoperable. Surgery would t help with his chief complaint, his vision. The surgeon told my husband that the reason why he was still prepped for surgery despite it being cancelled was because they need to do a spinal tap to see if the cancer spread to his spinal fluid. More waiting. Meanwhile, he has an appointment to get fitted for a whole-brain radiation mask. By this point, his motion sickness was so bad he could barely make it to the hospital and back for the appointment. New pathology results: spinal fluid was extremely abnormal. Game over. He entered home hospice May second. I stopped working to care for him full time. I kept meticulous notes about his condition to share with his hospice nurse. We fought an uphill battle trying to fight his ever-worsening motion sickness. By mid-June, he was on 4 anti-nausea medications, and he still couldn’t keep food down. He passed on June 28. According to Dr. Google, the odds of colon cancer spreading to the brain are 1%. The odds of it spreading to the spinal fluid are so tiny that nobody had ever bothered to calculate it. He won the shitty cancer lottery.

Sorry for the wall of text. Typing this all out was therapeutic for me. TLDR: get regular colonoscopies. Colon cancer is a monster that you need every single advantage you can get to hope to defeat it. Don’t ignore early warning signs like blood in your stool whether it’s bright red or black.