ABOVE: Adenomatous polyp
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Rachel Winegar, a mother of three from Colorado, has had trouble with her digestive system for as long as she can remember. So when she neared 30 and her problems intensified, colorectal cancer did not cross her mind. Her doctor figured it was perhaps a chronic condition like celiac disease, ulcerative colitis, or Crohn’s disease. She was suffering: “rectal bleeding even while passing gas, full feeling, bloated, nauseous, low energy, feeling of sitting on something, pencil-thin stools,” she writes in an email to The Scientist.
After she finally went to a doctor, Winegar was scheduled for a colonoscopy. But instead of finding evidence for any of those conditions, her doctor discovered a mass the size of Winegar’s palm in her rectum, she recalls. It was stage 4 cancer. “My husband and our three kids and I have had our lives turned upside down because of ...
