By the time Shannon Lee-Sin finally learned what was wrong with her, she had seen 20 doctors and spent 12 years searching for answers.
She first noticed signs of trouble while still in high school. The daily stomachaches, Lee-Sin said, were often accompanied by blood in her stool — “the water was actually red, like Kool-Aid.”
As a 17-year-old, Lee-Sin and her mother did what many families would do.
“I went to my pediatrician,” she said. “I was a junior in high school, and I told him that I was having a stomachache every day and that sometimes at night the stomachache could be really bad.”
“He was obviously loved and respected,” she said. “Plus, it was 1999 and [this] wasn’t even a blip on the radar yet, in terms of early onset, so nobody thought they’d be seeing a polyp at that point. He never did any diagnostic test on me.”
She was treated for an ulcer, but her symptoms worsened over the next five years. At the time, few recognized that younger people were increasingly being diagnosed with colorectal cancer, a disease that has since been shown to disproportionately affect Black Americans and younger adults.
By the time actor Chadwick Boseman died in 2020 at age 43, colorectal cancer had become widely recognized as one that disproportionately affects Black Americans and younger adults.
For Shannon, things came to a head after her 29th birthday.
“At that point, I would have diarrhea for two weeks, and then I’d be constipated for two weeks,” she said. “So, definitely not normal.”
While living in Jamaica, she was diagnosed with ovarian cysts and sent home without further testing. Hospitalizations continued until she returned to Miami, where her mother found her unconscious and took her to the hospital, vowing not to leave until her daughter was tested — “even if they have to arrest me.”
Doctors again diagnosed a cyst, but she was also severely anemic and in sepsis. That’s when Dr. Eric Valladares performed exploratory surgery — a decision that saved her life.
“I woke up a week later hearing that I had stage 3C adenocarcinoma of my colon,” she said. “And so, my first thought was, ‘Okay, God — this is going to be one heck of a fight, and at least now I know what I’m fighting.’”
After surgery, Lee-Sin began chemotherapy and joined a cancer support community, where she was the only colorectal cancer survivor and the youngest.
“My doctors made me feel like I was their rare case, and there was nobody else like me,” she said.
That changed in 2013.
“When I walked in, I saw a room that 80% of them were young people like me,” she said. “This was in 2013. I realized that I wasn’t rare — and I wasn’t alone.”
Now 44, Lee-Sin uses her experience to help others. In 2023, she launched the podcast “Blue Couch Chat,” creating a space for patients and survivors to talk openly about the disease and its impact.
“Blue has always been my favorite color and it’s also the color of a colorectal cancer ribbon,” she said.
Her goal is to ensure patients know they are not alone and understand the importance of screening and early detection.
“Don’t make yourself go through what I went through,” Lee-Sin said. “If the doctor is not listening to you and you know something is wrong … find another doctor.”
“The colonoscopy is the only way to actually prevent this,” she said. “I saw over 20-something doctors … but I didn’t stop until I got an answer, and that’s what saved my life.”
“I didn’t stop until I got a doctor who listened, and that is really important,” Lee-Sin said. “We have to know how to advocate for ourselves.”
This story originally appeared here.