At just 26, David Lyon had never faced a serious health scare — aside from a sports injury here and there.
“When I first noticed the symptoms, cancer was the last thing on my mind,” he told Today.
”I kind of wrote it off…”
Today, nearly three times as many young people are being diagnosed with colon and rectal cancer compared to the 1990s, new research reveals.
The sharp rise in this type of cancer among young people has left researchers puzzled, and studies are now underway to uncover the reasons behind it. What is clear, however, is that this devastating disease shatters the lives of many young individuals and causes immense pain for their families and loved ones as well.
David Lyon, 26, from Erie, Pennsylvania, never imagined cancer could strike him at such a young age. Because of his age, seeing blood in the toilet didn’t immediately set off alarms.
”I was seeing red when I would go to the bathroom. And I didn’t think much of it,” Lyon told Today.
”I kind of wrote it off because I worked in a sheet metal shop, and I didn’t know if maybe I had a piece of metal on my finger and it scratched something.”
But his symptoms quickly worsened. Abdominal pain became so intense that he could barely stand upright, finding relief only when hunched over.
”That is when I was like, yeah, something’s not right. I need to go get it checked out,” he recalls. “Cancer was the farthest thing from my mind.”
A colonoscopy revealed a mass, and subsequent scans showed the cancer had already spread to his liver. At just 26, Lyon received a devastating Stage 4 colon cancer diagnosis.
