A woman has opened up about an "embarrassing" symptom she experienced for months before receiving a diagnosis of stage 3 cancer.
Jelena Tompkins, from Colorado, was 34 years old when she first noticed changes in her body in 2016.
However, as the young woman ran a marathon and maintained a healthy diet, she dismissed these changes.
According to The Mirror, one of the symptoms Tompkins experienced before she was diagnosed with stage 3 cancer was her gas smelling worse than usual.
Although she tried to resolve the issue with probiotics, the odor didn't improve, prompting further concern. However, it wasn't until she noticed blood in her stool that she fully recognized the seriousness of the situation.
Tompkins decided to tell a doctor about her bodily changes at her annual check-up, but they attributed the bleeding to potential dietary changes and did not express any concerns.
However, three months later, the medics began doing tests to identify potential dietary triggers. They used a colonoscopy, which sadly revealed a more serious underlying condition: stage three rectal cancer that had spread to Tompkins' lymph nodes.
"I was in some of the best shape of my life," she told The Patient Story. "I ate healthily and never thought that cancer would strike me at such a young age."
The mom-of-one shared that she underwent a grueling 28 days of radiation therapy and took the chemotherapy pill Xeloda - a cancer medicine that is used to treat: colon (large bowel) cancer.
Surgeons then removed 12 inches of her colon and rectum and 17 lymph nodes, leaving five cancerous nodes remaining.
After that, Tompkins had an ileostomy - an opening in the belly (abdominal wall) that’s made during surgery, per the American Cancer Society - and started on the combination chemotherapy FOLFOX, which ended in May 2017.
Tompkins is now in remission but still goes through maintenance chemotherapy and annual scans.
"My oncologist said we will have you come in every 3 months for follow-up appointments," she said in an interview with Editor Lauren Woolfe. "We will check your blood work, we will do CT scans twice a year."
"Even now, 4 years on, my oncologist still sees me every 4 months – he really wants to stay on top of making sure that it does not relapse, because typically if it does come back for young people it is more aggressive and faster growing," she added.
Tompkins, who had no family history of cancer, turned to online patient communities for help during tough times.
"We could vent to each other when we were really tired or ask, 'Hey, is this bothering your system?' Or, 'Oh my gosh, is your ileostomy going crazy too? What can you do to slow this down? What do you drink when you're going through FOLFOX and you've got that cold sensitivity and everything has to be hot?'" she said, per The Mirror.
"Those are some of the things you don't necessarily bother your oncologist about, but having a friend there to support you through can help bounce ideas off of you and help you feel like you've got a support group that's there for you and that you can reach out to if you're having a bad day," she concluded.
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