Devoted to Motherhood, Heather Now Navigates Life with Stage 4 Colon Cancer

September 14, 2025

Heather, devoted mom to two energetic, young boys discovered she had stage 4 colon cancer in May 2024. It shifted her world in ways she never imagined possible. With all that’s been thrown her way, she staunchly stuck to her priorities, being present for her children, so that she could watch them grow into kind-hearted men.

Interviewed by: Taylor Scheib
Edited by: Chris Sanchez

Heather’s symptoms began subtly in the summer of 2023 and then worsened. Severe bloating after meals, a distended abdomen, and, later, rectal bleeding became impossible to ignore. Like many busy parents, she brushed off these signs, thinking they were just dietary issues. She tried to manage them by changing her diet, but they persisted, so she finally saw a gastroenterologist. A series of tests, including an ultrasound, uncovered lesions in her liver and a diagnosis of stage 4 colon cancer. This set in motion a whirlwind of appointments and evaluations.

The news of metastatic cancer was surreal and disconcerting. Heather recalls the disbelief, the constant urge to “fix” things, and the emotional waves that followed. Hearing “stage 4 colon cancer” was jarring, not just because of the diagnosis itself, but also because it’s rarely associated with young, otherwise healthy women in their 30s. Because she had to process this reality while caring for her young sons, her emotional journey became more convoluted.

Heather’s treatment began with chemotherapy. While the side effects were challenging, including severe rashes, blurred vision, and hair loss, her determination never wavered. Encouragingly, her scans showed significant improvement, with tumor markers dropping to zero. However, her oncologist determined that a liver transplant might be her best chance for long-term health.

After facing delays and uncertainties with initial transplant centers, Heather found hope at NYU Langone Health, where the process moved swiftly. Her candid doctor emphasized the need for a living liver donor due to the scarcity of cadaver livers for patients like her.

Heather’s strength is amplified by her powerful support network. Her husband, who balanced his work life and parent-teacher association roles, became her rock. Her friends and family stepped in, too, managing school runs and childcare so that Heather could focus on her treatments. Social media became a surprising source of hope for her, as she was able to link with potential liver donors and rally her community of supporters.

Despite the physical toll of treatments for stage 4 colon cancer, Heather prioritizes her quality time with her sons. Whether attending school events or simply sharing bedtime stories, she cherishes these moments. Even on tough days, her desire for her children to live normal lives shines through.

Heather’s advice is heartfelt: “Don’t ignore your body’s signals. Prioritise your health because your loved ones depend on you.” Her story isn’t just about stage 4 colon cancer; it’s about the power of advocacy, community, and unwavering love.

Watch Heather’s video and scroll down to browse through the transcript of her interview for more insights:

“I just thought I was bloated, until I wasn’t.” Discover Heather’s surprising first symptom
How 47 strangers (and counting) have stepped up to save one mom’s life
Parenting while battling stage 4 colon cancer
“I didn’t think it could happen to me.” What Heather wants every young woman to know
The emotional rollercoaster of waiting for a liver transplant and staying hopeful

Name: Heather C.
Age at Diagnosis:
- 35
Diagnosis:
- Colon Cancer
Staging:
- Stage 4
Symptoms:
- Severe bloating
- Indigestion
- Vomiting
- Rectal bleeding
Treatments:
- Chemotherapy
- Surgery: liver transplant (upcoming)

This interview has been edited for clarity and length. This is not medical advice. Please consult with your healthcare provider to make informed treatment decisions.

The views and opinions expressed in this interview do not necessarily reflect those of The Patient Story.

Transcript of Heather’s Interview

Hello, my name is Heather
When things first started to feel “off”
The moment everything changed
Finding the right care team
What my stage 4 colon cancer treatment plan has looked like
Exploring options for my liver
Meeting my transplant doctor
How I’ve navigated my emotions about the liver transplant
Staying present with my kids
Staying optimistic about my diagnosis
What my biggest advice is

Hello, my name is Heather

I was diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer in May 2024.

I have two boys, James and Lucas. They’re six and three. I’m obsessed with them. Whatever I do, my number one reason is to make sure I’m there with them.

I want to see them grow big, and I want to see what kind of men they become. Hopefully, good men. It’s important to be kind.

When things first started to feel “off”

I let things go on longer than I’d like to admit, but I can remember as far back as the summer of 2023. Lucas was just about a year old by then. I remember going to a wedding and looking in the mirror, thinking I looked six months pregnant. I thought, “This should not be the case.” That was my main symptom, severe bloating. I’d eat the smallest thing and just look enormous, and I would show my husband. I’d go, “This isn’t normal,” and he would agree. Something was going on.

I let that go on a bit longer, obviously. By 2024, I started noticing rectal bleeding. It wasn’t like normal rectal bleeding. It was a little bit heavier. I was concerned. So I remember being at an urgent care one day and mentioning it to them. I was there for something totally different, like a cold, but I did mention it to them, and they were like, “It’s probably internal hemorrhoids.” I continued for a couple more months, but it wasn’t going away. The bloating and indigestion were really bothering me.

I gave up gluten and dairy. I was just trying to heal myself instead of just going and getting this looked at. But I finally decided, “Okay, I’m going to find a gastroenterologist and I’m going to get to the bottom of this.”

So, I saw the gastroenterologist and he was good, he didn’t do wrong by me. He said, “Okay, we’re going to schedule an ultrasound of your abdomen, a colonoscopy and endoscopy, and we’re going to get to the bottom of this.”

The moment everything changed

We had the ultrasound done first, and that’s where they found lesions throughout my liver. They called me and said, “We want you to come in.” I said, “No, no, you have to tell me right now. I’m alone with my children, and I can’t wait till tomorrow. I’m going to be freaking out all day.”

I put up enough of a fight that they did a Zoom with me and told me that they’re suspecting I have metastatic cancer. They’re just not sure where it’s coming from. So they said, “We’ll move up your colonoscopy, and in the meantime, go to your dermatologist, go to your gynecologist, go to your eye doctor if you’ve ever had a freckle in your eye,” which I did. So for the next couple of days, I did that.

Then, of course, it was the colonoscopy that found the mass.

I don’t think I even believed them still. I’m always trying to fix whatever is going on, whether it’s something small or big, or something with the kids. I need to get to the bottom of it right away. I just need to fix this.

I don’t think I was able to just sit down and really soak it in. I think that’s what I’m doing a lot nowadays. Now, everything still feels so surreal that it’ll hit me every once in a while, and I’ll just start crying. But yeah, I don’t think I really knew the severity of it in the first few months. As strange as that sounds, I was just like, “I’ve just got to do things. I’m just going to do whatever they tell me to do, and we’ll fix it. We’ll be out of this in the next couple of months,” which definitely was not the case.

I guess I never thought it would be colon cancer. I thought it would be something treatable, and it’s not really something heard of in people my age, especially young women. You hear a lot of breast cancer and ovarian stuff. You never really hear of colon cancer in young, pretty much healthy women in their 30s.

Finding the right care team

As soon as I woke up from my colonoscopy, I was sitting in my driveway on the phone, calling oncologists and making appointments. I found a doctor who was interested in my story because I was young and had stage four cancer. He wanted to pull me in right away. So I moved fairly quickly. My oncologist, Dr. Cohen, has been great. Aggressive in a good way.

So I made three different appointments, with Sloan Kettering, another doctor nearby, and that oncologist, who was actually referred by a colorectal surgeon I saw first and told me, “You don’t need surgery. You need chemo.” He referred me to that oncologist. He was the one who wanted to see me right away, and the other two had open appointments really far out. I wanted to get this done quickly.

At my first meeting with the oncologist, he said, “Okay, you have scans scheduled for these dates that aren’t going to work for me.” He called them all up and went, “No, she needs to come in now. She’s 35.” I liked that about him right away. I think I met with him maybe at the end of May or June, the month of my son’s birthday. I had my first treatment. Everything moved quickly, and I liked that. I absolutely felt like he wanted to help me.

What my stage 4 colon cancer treatment plan has looked like

Originally, I was put on two different chemo drugs, and one of them caused a rash. I was only able to tolerate seven rounds of the first drug, which was a good day at the seventh round. I was just looking around and noticed that my vision was getting very blurry. My heart started racing. I told the doctors, “I don’t know if this is anxiety, but just letting you guys know that something’s wrong.”

So they came over and took my blood pressure. They’re like, “Okay, disconnect her and pump her with Benadryl.” They said that this usually happens around the seventh round. Not everyone can tolerate it. So, then I was switched to another drug, but still with back-to-backs. So I’ve been on that for 18 rounds, I think I had 25 or 26 so far. So that would be like probably 18 rounds of that new drug.

It causes hair loss, which, luckily, I have not been experiencing lately, which is nice. I mean, just my eyelashes and my eyebrows. I had such a severe rash on my scalp that my hair just thinned so much. I ended up just shaving it off.

Exploring options for my liver

Ever since the start of June 2024, everything has been shrinking. I’ve been seeing improvement. Every scan is better than the last. My first Signatera test was around 3000, and then by around August of 2024, it was zero. So I walked in for my appointment with the oncologist, and everyone was celebrating.

So, in my head, I was like, “Does that mean I’m done? What does this mean?” But no, I wasn’t done yet. Every Signatera since then has been negative. So all the lesions except for maybe two or three were so small that they weren’t even lighting up on a PET scan anymore. So everything seemed to be improving to the point that the oncologist said, “Okay, let’s talk about an ablation. We have a surgeon here upstairs. You can see him later today, and you could talk about what’s next.”

So I had that appointment, I went upstairs, I met with him, and I was ready to talk about an ablation or resection or whatever was needed to finish this off, and then we could move on with our lives. He walked in and he said, “You are not resectable. There are numerous lesions throughout your liver, and yes, they’re small, but I can’t say that they’re not cancerous. So, I think your best option would be a transplant or a pump that pumps chemo directly into the liver.”

“Oh, my gosh,” I thought, “What do you mean? That’s not what I thought they were going to say.” So I went home. I cried and thought about it for a while, and I was like, I don’t know if I want this hepatic artery infusion or HAI pump. I’m reading more and more about it. If I did need a transplant, having a HAI pump could potentially damage my liver, and I wouldn’t be eligible for a transplant any longer. So I said, “I think I want this transplant.”

It took me a couple of months to hear from the transplant coordinator at this particular hospital. I kept emailing the surgeon and saying, “When am I going to hear back from him?” And he was like, “I can’t believe you haven’t heard from them yet. Let me reach out again.” And then another week or two would go by, and I would be like, “Hey, it’s me again. Still haven’t heard from the transplant coordinator,” and they were getting angry because I guess it wasn’t happening on their end. I finally heard from them in maybe January.

I got an appointment for February of 2025, and I went to this hospital. They didn’t seem too familiar with my history, and they just went over it quickly, like, “Okay, yes, you should get a transplant, but because you’re otherwise healthy, you would not be anywhere near the top of the list for a cadaver liver. I said, “Oh, okay.” With colon cancer, liver transplants are so new. It’s not really something that helps you get there faster. So I said, “Well, what about a living donor transplant? Because I have a sister. We all have the same blood type. Is that something I can consider?” And they were like, “Absolutely, but we don’t do that here.”

So I left that appointment and cried a lot the whole ride home. But when I got home, I started googling hospitals that do living liver transplants, and found a ton of them. I made appointments at three of them on my couch in the middle of the night, just scheduling them on their websites. NYU was one. They all called me the next day and asked for my scans. NYU got back to me first and said, “We have a surgeon who would like to meet you, so let’s get you in here.” I met that doctor at NYU, and it’s been going pretty fast ever since.

Meeting my transplant doctor

So, the doctor came in, and he was very tall, first of all, and very serious, but candid. Tough, like I want in a doctor. So he said to me, “Look, there are always going to be go spots, and this is something that’s going to go everywhere. So, what you need is a liver transplant, and you’re the perfect candidate for it. It’s nowhere else in your body aside from your liver, and you’re young. This is something I want to do for you, but I’m going to need a donor. So, I told him about my sister, and he was like, “Okay, but, well, I need backup. I want you to go on social media. I want you to get out there.”

So that’s what we did. We went on social media. My husband’s made a lot of connections through being in the military and in our school community. He’s taking care of me, becoming a PTA dad. He works in the movie business, so he made a lot of connections that way. So, he just went on social media and started posting it. I think in a matter of days, I had 47 applicants for a liver transplant, and the number’s been growing since then. I have been really blessed in that way.

I think people started going in for evaluations in April, this past April, and they really can’t tell me anything about it. It’s anonymous, so I don’t know who’s going in and who’s getting nicked. They’re still screening people. My sister was one of the first to go in, and she unfortunately can’t donate to me, but she’s going to help me in so many other ways, so she doesn’t beat herself up about it.

How I’ve navigated my emotions about the liver transplant

It’s scary. I’m scared, impatient sometimes, because I’m just so tired of chemo, and I know I can’t stop chemo until this happens. But mainly afraid, because it’s not a guaranteed cure. It could come back after this. It’s a lot of unknowns.

I don’t know anything. I don’t know when this could happen. I don’t know what life’s going to be like afterwards. I’m hoping that I’m strong enough to bounce back from this and live a nice, long, healthy life.

I don’t want anyone to be without me. I think I worry about them more than myself. Yeah, sure, I’m scared of dying and not being here, but I’m scared of what that would do to them.

Staying present with my kids

I do want to be there for them, I definitely do, especially when I’m feeling good. I want to be there. I want to be at the school pickups and drop-offs, and whatever activities they have going on. So when I feel good, I do it, and then when I don’t feel good, I still try to do it, and then I get yelled at about doing it. So, I just try to rest the first couple of days after treatment, kind of stay away from them a little bit because they’re always trying to drink my water and kiss me and be all over me, and I just feel like, “Stay away from this stuff. It’s poison.” That’s the time they get to spend more time with their dad. They need normal childhoods, and they need to just be kids and not worry about what I’m doing.

We’ve had such an amazing community behind us and helping us in a lot of ways. Friends who are doing pickups and drop-offs, and family who are coming to watch them while we do our treatments. I just want my kids to have fun. So whoever’s with them, I’m like, “Oh, good, I know they’re gonna have a good time,” or they’ll be outside or they’ll be playing, like they won’t just be sitting there watching TV all day long while I’m getting something done, because that’s more important. I still want them to be kids.

Staying optimistic about my diagnosis

I’ve always kind of been this person, and I think it helps me shake off the serious talks. My nurses always say, “Oh my gosh, she’s smiling. She’s back, smiling again. I don’t know why she’s so happy to be here.”

I don’t know. It just makes me feel stronger, I guess. Maybe it’s a defense mechanism. A coping mechanism to get me through it. It definitely helps, and my husband has a similar humor, too. We all have sad stuff, so it helps us get through it. It really is helpful. You can’t have those sad eyes looking at you all this time; we need to talk about other things. So every time people ask me about it, I’m like, “Oh, aren’t you sick of talking about me?”

What my biggest advice is

I want people, especially people my age, or people starting families, big careers, or getting married, to not brush off any abnormal symptoms that they may be having. I want you to take care of your bodies.

I know, we put ourselves aside to take care of our children, and then it takes us months, sometimes years, even like go to the dentist. I don’t want you to do that because you are important to so many people. You need to be there, because like I said, the people who depend on you wouldn’t survive without you. Had I taken care of this sooner, maybe we wouldn’t have been talking today. But I also can’t think about that too much. Just take care of your bodies. Don’t go to Doctor Google. Call a physician and tell them everything. Even the stuff you’re embarrassed to say. Tell them what’s going on. Because sometimes it’s not normal. Just do the best you can.

Thank you for sharing your story, Heather!