I got stage 3 colorectal cancer in my 30s — I didn’t want to be a hypochondriac about this symptom but I’m glad I pushed

Brooks Bell’s gut told her something was wrong — but it took two doctors misdiagnosing her symptoms before she got the answer that would change her life forever.

“I wanted a colonoscopy right from the start,” Bell told The Post. “But I had this voice in my head saying, ‘Don’t be dramatic. Don’t be a hypochondriac. Don’t be that girl who runs straight to the scary thing.’”

The “scary thing” turned out to be her reality: stage 3 colon cancer, and time was critical. Had her tumor spread just a millimeter deeper into her colon wall during the time she was seeking a third opinion, her chances of survival could have plummeted by nearly 20%.

Excluding skin cancers, colorectal cancer is the third most common cancer in the United States. The number of early-onset cases is on the rise, with diagnoses in people under 50 expected to double by 2030.

Bell’s experience underscores a harsh reality: many of these cases aren’t correctly identified at first. According to the Colon Cancer Alliance, 82% of young colon cancer survivors were initially misdiagnosed and 67% consulted at least two doctors before getting the right diagnosis.

In 2019, the data analytics company Bell founded was flourishing, and the job came with plenty of travel. The then-38-year-old thought she was “pretty healthy,” despite the stresses of being a CEO.

“I hadn’t eaten red meat consistently since my teenage years, I was exercising regularly and eating salads for lunch most days,” she said. “I’m not overweight, I’ve never smoked, but it was very stressful running a company with 50 employees.”

Then, while traveling for business in November 2018, Bell noticed blood in her stool. She quickly googled potential causes and called her primary care doctor, who assured her it was probably just internal hemorrhoids.

“The doctor basically told me not to do anything about it,” Bell recalled. 

Relieved, she carried on with her busy life in Raleigh, North Carolina. Later that month, at Thanksgiving dinner, she even joked with family that she was “grateful that I have a hemorrhoid, not colon cancer.”

But the blood continued. Concerned, she saw another doctor for an in-person exam.

“She didn’t find a hemorrhoid, but still thought that’s what it was,” Bell said. She was prescribed cortisone cream and sent home.

Yet Bell remained unsettled.

“If you’re bleeding you can’t be healthy,” she said. “I needed to get to the bottom of it, so I decided to get a third opinion. I cold-called a gastroenterologist.”

It wasn’t until early January 2019 that she finally had a colonoscopy.

“Aren’t I too young for colon cancer?” Bell remembers asking the physician’s assistant before drifting off into an anesthesia-induced slumber.

When Bell woke up, her doctor approached her with an ashen look and avoided eye contact. The news was devastating: They had found the source of the bleeding, and it was almost certainly cancer.

Testing confirmed that it was stage 3A, meaning the cancer had spread through the first two layers of her colon and reached two nearby lymph nodes. But she was just a millimeter away from being diagnosed with stage 3B.

That tiny difference could have been life-altering. The five-year survival rate for stage 3A is 83.4%, but it plummets to 64.1% for stage 3B, according to the American Joint Committee on Cancer.

Bell remembers the shock of hearing the diagnosis. “My life wasn’t over, but it just changed forever,” she said. “The ‘Big C’ is now attached to me and that will never be different.”

The journey ahead would test her strength. Weeks later, doctors removed the tumor, 10 inches of her colon and two cancerous lymph nodes. Then came three months of high-dose chemotherapy to destroy any lingering cells and reduce the chances of the cancer returning.

“What people don’t realize is that when you’re done, you might be cured, but you won’t know for a couple of years because after that, it’s a waiting game to see if it comes back,” Bell said. “If it recurs, then you’ll be upgraded to stage 4, and it’s a completely different game plan.”

For Bell, that two-year observation period was the hardest part. “It’s not the treatment, it’s the waiting and the fear,” she said.

Six years later, Bell is cancer-free and feels great, but still grapples with her mortality. “Once you’ve had cancer, you never fully recover from it,” she said. “Thinking so much about dying changes how you prioritize things.”

Unlike the years she spent hustling as a CEO, Bell now ensures she gets 10 hours of sleep each night and devotes her time to friends, family and raising awareness about colon cancer.

“I’m a lot happier than I was before,” Bell said. “I felt really good about my career and my level of success … but underneath, I wasn’t really all that happy.” 

Together with her friend Sarah Beran, who was diagnosed with stage 4 colorectal cancer at just 34, Bell co-founded the fashion brand Worldclass to break the stigma surrounding colon cancer and advocate for early screenings. The duo donates proceeds to fund colonoscopies for those who can’t afford them.

“The bottom line is colonoscopies prevent colon cancer,” Bell said, explaining that the procedure allows doctors to spot and remove polyps — abnormal growths in the colon lining — before they turn cancerous.

The recommendation from the US Prevention Task Force is to start colorectal cancer screenings — that is, colonoscopies — at age 45. But if you have a family history, that age can drop. 

Bell stressed the importance of listening to your body and requesting a colonoscopy if you have symptoms, even if you’re below the recommended screening age.

“You’ve got to push,” she said. “Doctors aren’t bad people and it’s not that they don’t care… but for you as a patient, that time might be the difference between life and death.”

The colon cancer mortality rate in people under 55 has been rising about 1% annually since the mid-2000s, while deaths among older adults have declined. This is partly due to the fact that cancer in younger people is often detected at more advanced stages, according to the American Cancer Society.

Colorectal cancer is the leading cause of cancer death in US men under 50 and the second-leading cause in women of the same age group, despite being highly treatable when caught early.

In 2025, the American Cancer Society estimates that 154,270 new cases of colorectal cancer will be diagnosed in the US, and 52,900 people will die from the disease.