Woman who has endured 180 chemo treatments for colon cancer shares desperate message to others

A woman who went through 180 chemo treatments for colon cancer has issued a warning to others.

Colon cancer kills around 50,000 Americans a year. Credit: SEBASTIAN KAULITZKI/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY/Getty

Jamie Comer was just 47 when a routine blood test changed everything.

The active, seemingly healthy mom from San Francisco had no symptoms — no warning signs.

The one clue that something was not quite right was elevated liver enzymes.

That’s when doctors discovered she had stage 4 colon cancer that had already spread to her liver.

She was told she had just three to six months to live. That was in 2016.

Fast forward to 2025 — nine years, 180 rounds of chemotherapy, seven surgeries, and countless scans later — Comer, now 55, is finally saying goodbye to treatment.

She's entered hospice care, choosing to spend her time at home with her husband and 17-year-old daughter.

“It’s not really a difficult decision,” Comer told ABC7 News. “There were no treatment options that were working and the chemotherapy was making me sicker so I couldn’t recover.”

At the time of her diagnosis, Comer had 57 tumors on her liver—45 on the right side, 12 on the left.

“I would likely die in three to six months,” she recalled being told.

But she refused to go quietly.

“I challenge them, I don’t just take the first no,” she said of her doctors.

What followed was a near-decade-long fight: multiple surgeries, chemotherapy sessions that lasted eight to eleven hours, three days every other week, and somewhere between 60 to 70 scans.

Even as treatments extended her life, they came at a high cost.

“It wasn’t a difficult decision,” she said of her choice to stop. “There were no treatment options that were working and the chemo was making me sicker so I couldn’t recover.”

Still, Comer isn’t giving up on life—just on the treatments. Her mission now is to use her experience to help others.

“I keep saying the same thing over and over: Screen early,” she said. “To the problem in your life, you are the answer and you are the solution. You have to figure it out.”

Her diagnosis came just before the recommended screening age for colonoscopies was lowered from 50 to 45.

“If the recommended colon cancer screening age had been moved just a few years earlier, I would have been inconvenienced for maybe 18 months, but it would not have been a death sentence,” she said.

Colonoscopies are considered the gold standard in colon cancer detection. The American Cancer Society now recommends getting screened every 10 years starting at age 45.

Had that guideline been in place sooner, Comer's cancer might have been caught before it spread.

Perhaps the most sobering part of Comer's story is that she had none of the classic colon cancer symptoms—no bloody stool, no abdominal pain, no bowel changes.

The only red flag was a slightly abnormal blood test result showing elevated liver enzymes.

“Cancer that has spread to the liver damages protective cells and can lead to excess enzymes flooding into the bloodstream,” doctors explained.

Despite the toll of her diagnosis and treatment, Comer is still here—still hopeful, still advocating, still inspiring.

“Who would want to leave, who would want to leave this beautiful world with all this kindness?” she said. “My daughter, Olivia, and my husband, they keep me going.”

And through it all, her message has stayed the same: “Screen early.”

Featured image credit: YouTube/ABC7 (Screenshot)