Colorectal cancer keeps rising among younger adults. No one’s sure why – CBC
U.S. report shows grim toll of colorectal cancer, as Canadian clinicians call for more awareness, screenings
Mar 09, 2023
After giving birth to her third child at 35-years old, Alexis Juliao began noticing blood in her stool.
“Everyone said to me, it’s hemorrhoids, you just had a baby,” the London, Ont., mother recalled. “Everyone explained it, or dismissed it, as being normal.”
But Juliao knew it wasn’t normal. And she knew she didn’t have any hemorrhoids.
What followed was a lengthy, frustrating process to figure out what was actually going on. For more than six months, Juliao kept experiencing the same bleeding, but most people simply brushed it off because of her age. She eventually took photos of the blood in her stool, prompting her physician to refer her for a colonoscopy.
Once Juliao finally had her scope — after nearly nine months of experiencing symptoms — she learned what was causing her bizarre bleeding while breastfeeding her youngest daughter in her hospital bed: a tumour.
