A 20-year-old woman had waves of stomach pain for months. She was eventually diagnosed with stage 2 colon cancer.

• Katie Davis, now 21, started experiencing severe stomach pains when she was 20.

• Doctors initially suspected a benign ovarian cyst and told her to monitor for symptoms.

• After she experienced chills and nausea, she underwent a colonoscopy and was diagnosed with stage 2 colon cancer.

Katie Davis was living a typical busy college life when she first felt stomach pains.

Davis, then 20, was a junior at Westchester University in Pennsylvania majoring in marketing, dividing her time between classes, her job at Playa Bowls and her sorority. Pain in the upper right side of the abdomen is easy to miss because it is so sporadic and short-lived.

“It would come on and off, in waves,” Davis, now 21, told Business Insider. “I would go through long periods of time without it, and then it would come back, but only for minutes, sometimes seconds.”

Over time, the pain—when it occurred—became more severe, sometimes causing her to double over in pain. Three months after the incident began, she went to a local urgent care center at her boyfriend’s beach house. The facility did not have ultrasound equipment, and she was told that based on her symptoms, it was likely an ovarian cyst that would hopefully go away after her next period.

Her doctor suspected colon cancer before biopsy

Davis was told to watch for pain and go to the emergency room if he felt fever or other symptoms such as nausea. Davis did just that a few days later when she started feeling chills and vomiting at her parents’ house.

“This was the first time anyone had ever presented to me with a problem more serious than an ovarian cyst,” Davis said. According to her ultrasound and CAT scan, her colon was inflamed and appeared to have free fluid, a potential sign of infection, trauma or cancer.

Emergency room doctors thought it might be Crohn’s disease or ulcerative colitis, or, in more serious cases, colon cancer. He scheduled a colonoscopy.

“I didn’t think I was going to get cancer or anything really serious,” Davis said. Her first clue that something was wrong came when she woke up from surgery. She noticed that she was placed in a different room from other colonoscopy patients.

The doctor who performed the surgery told Davis and her mother that he was “pretty sure” the mass in Davis’ colon was cancerous. “He said he’d been doing it long enough that he could speak out,” she said.

Shortly after, Davis was diagnosed with stage 2 colon cancer.

“I didn’t really know what to think or feel,” Davis said of her diagnosis. “It was definitely just numbness and confusion at first, like ‘How did I get this?'”

Treatment delayed due to side effects such as vision loss

After the diagnosis, Davis underwent colon surgery and was due to begin three months of chemotherapy soon. However, side effects complicated her treatment.

“I couldn’t tolerate the more severe chemotherapy,” Davis said. She developed extreme fatigue, nausea and neuropathy, and said her hands felt “tingly” every time she encountered a temperature change.

The most worrisome side effect was her vision loss. “My vision would go completely black,” Davis said. Her parents researched the drug oxaliplatin, which may cause vision problems in some patients. Davis also found the Colorectal Cancer Alliance (CCA) and said hearing similar stories about common side effects helped her learn about alternative treatment options.

Davis received only oral chemotherapy drugs, extending her treatment from three months to six months. The only benefit is that she no longer has to travel back and forth for treatment because she can take it with her.

All the while, despite her professors knowing about her colon cancer diagnosis, she continued to attend as many college classes as possible in person. “My boyfriend lives there, all my friends live there, so I go there as much as I can,” she said. “I try to keep up with my work as much as possible, but it’s definitely hard to do schoolwork when I feel as horrible as I did during chemo.”

She was happy to hear the sound of her body

Davis completed chemotherapy in June 2025 and was declared cured shortly after. Going forward, she will have blood tests every three months and colonoscopies annually.

Now, she’s a senior working as a marketing intern at a financial consulting firm and trying to figure out her post-graduation plans. She said completing treatment made her feel “happy to be normal again” and return to a normal college life without having to worry about doctor’s appointments or treatment side effects.

Looking back, she’s glad she noticed the warning signs early. “A lot of my doctors said that most people my age or in my stage wouldn’t actually have the symptoms I had to let me know something was wrong,” she said. “I’m glad I learned to listen to my body.”

That’s her biggest advice for young people with similar or subtle symptoms, as colon cancer has recently become the leading cause of cancer death in people under 50. She said joining the CCA and colon cancer Facebook group can also help raise awareness of potential symptoms.

“You’re not the only one going through this,” she says, whether you’re worried about symptoms or actively pursuing treatment. “There are other people who have been through this who can help you.”

Read the original article on Business Insider