After 180 Chemo Treatments for Colon Cancer, a Mom Faces Her End: 'Who Would Ever Want to Leave This Beautiful World?'

A woman who was diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer has undergone 180 rounds of chemotherapy over nearly a decade — but says she's now on hospice care, as "no treatment options" were working anymore.

Jamie Comer was given a dire diagnosis of stage 4 colon cancer that had metastasized to her liver in 2016. With 45 tumors on her right side and 12 on her left, the San Francisco mom, then 47, was told, “I would likely die in three to six months,” according to ABC7 News.

She began undergoing a rigorous treatment — seven surgeries, and up to 11 hours of chemotherapy, three times a week, which she estimated totaled about 180 chemotherapy treatments over nearly a decade.

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“I challenge them, I don’t just take the first no,” she told the outlet about how she collaborated with her medical team. But now, Comer, 55, is receiving hospice care at home. “It’s not really a difficult decision. There were no treatment options that were working and the chemotherapy was making me sicker so I couldn’t recover,” Comer said.

She shared that she was diagnosed before the colonoscopy screening age was moved down to 45, adding that if she’d been able to get screened, the cancer might have been caught sooner.

“I would have been inconvenienced for maybe 18 months, but it wouldn’t have been a death sentence,” Comer told the outlet, sharing that her daughter, Olivia, and her husband, keep her going.

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“Who would ever want to leave this beautiful world?” she said.  “I keep saying the same thing over and over: Screen early.”

Colorectal cancer rates among people younger than 50 have increased by 2.4% per year, the American Cancer Society reports — and mortality rates have increased by 1% per year. Current guidelines recommend that everyone between the ages of the 45 to 75 be screened for colorectal cancer, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control reports.

Tests range from stool tests to colonoscopies. This year, American Cancer Society estimates predict 107,320 people will be diagnosed with colon cancer, and 46,950 will be diagnosed with rectal cancer. It's expected to cause more than 52,000 deaths in the U.S. this year.

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