A Pennsylvania woman was diagnosed with deadly cancer after being dismissed by doctors.
Rylie Toomey, 27, was in the midst of planning her wedding and training for a half marathon when she was struck with unbearable abdominal pain in October 2024.
She rushed to the hospital, where doctors performed a CT scan and insisted she was just constipated before sending her home.
Doctors told her the same thing when she returned every few months for testing, until she ended up in the emergency department screaming in pain this past April. She was also suffering from a fever.
She said: ‘In my head I was like, I think I’m going to die – that’s how much pain I was in.
‘I felt like I was being stabbed, and my belly was super bloated, too. It felt like I was just going to explode.’
Toomey had suffered a perforated bowel, meaning there was a hole in her intestinal wall.
During that hospital visit, another CT scan detected stage four colon cancer that had spread to her liver and lungs – and she became one of the thousands of young Americans who have been diagnosed with colorectal cancer despite living healthy lives.
Rylie Toomey, pictured here with her fiance, was diagnosed with stage four colon cancer at 27
Toomey is one of the thousands of healthy Americans under 50 to be struck by the disease
Toomey told TODAY.com: ‘When you hear, “You have cancer,” you’re just like, that can’t be right. That can’t be me because leading up to this, I was so healthy.
‘To hear that I had colon cancer just didn’t make sense, just because you feel like colon cancer is linked to unhealthy people or people who eat unhealthy or the elderly.
‘I just was not expecting that at all.’
The American Cancer Society estimates over 154,000 Americans will be stuck by colorectal cancer this year, including about 20,000 under 50.
While this is roughly in line with two decades ago, the disease is rising sharply in younger groups.
From 1999 to 2018, the rate of colorectal cancer in the under-50 population rose from 8.6 cases per 100,000 people to 13 cases per 100,000 people.
Colorectal cancer diagnoses in 20- to 34-year-olds is set to increase by 90 percent between 2010 and 2030, and rates for teenagers have surged 500 percent since the early 2000s.
Lifestyle factors like diet, lack of exercise and a sedentary lifestyle have all been blamed, though these causes fail to explain why physically fit people like Toomey have increasingly been diagnosed with colorectal cancer.
The latest evidence, published in April, also suggests childhood exposure to a toxin released by E. coli bacteria could increase the risk of colorectal cancer by triggering inflammation and altering the balance of the gut microbiome.
Marijuana was also linked to colorectal cancer in a recent study, as it is thought to block tumor-suppressing cells.
Toomey told TODAY.com that she regularly plays lacrosse, runs and cycles and sticks to a healthy diet. She also has no family history of colon cancer.
Toomey, here with her fiancé, is having treatment and has pushed her wedding back a year
About one in five colorectal cancer patients are diagnosed like Toomey, after a bowel-related emergency often caused by the tumor growing, recent research shows.
Toomey is now receiving chemotherapy every two weeks and regular immunotherapy infusions, with eight treatments left.
Treatment forced her to push back her wedding, which was supposed to take place last month, and schedule it for June 2026.
She said: ‘It’s definitely something that keeps me going right now. It’s kind of hard to stay positive in situations like this, but this is something that’s bringing me joy and keeping me going.’
Friends have set up a GoFundMe page for medical expenses.
Toomey is also urging other young people with symptoms to get checked out immediately and push for answers, even if doctors are dismissive.
She said: ‘I just don’t want anybody to ever go through something like this. I think this happened for a reason so I can help others.’
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