In 2019, Sydney Stoner was 27 years old, just married, and had such immense stomach pain that she was collapsing at work. Doctors dismissed her concerns, saying that it was “that time of the month” or that she was too young for anything serious to happen to her. The pain had gotten so bad in 2020 that she lied to her doctor that she had blood in her stool, forcing them to refer her to a specialist and get a colonoscopy. That’s when they found the cancer.
When Stoner went in for the procedure, the doctors struggled to complete it as they found a five millimeter tumor blocking the pathway to her colon. At 27, she was diagnosed with Stage 4 bowel cancer, which had spread to her liver and lungs. The average woman doesn’t get regular colon cancer screenings until age 45. Had Stoner not lied to her primary care physician, she probably wouldn’t be here today.
"Doctors said I was too young but I probably would have died before I made it to the screening age of 45,” she told The Daily Mail. “It was very frustrating.”
According to University of California Davis and other sources, colorectal cancer is the number one cause of cancer death for men under 50 and number two for women in the same age range. In fact, people born between 1981 and 1996 for some reason have twice the risk of developing colorectal cancer than people born in 1950. Doctors and scientists haven’t found out exactly why there is an uptick in colorectal cancer diagnoses within younger people, but the fact that it’s become more common is true and troubling.
Stoner is one of the luckier younger people that got her diagnosis early enough that it wasn’t a death sentence. She was able to get the tumors growing in her colon and her liver surgically removed, and is considered stable after 23 rounds of chemotherapy. She is still lucky in that she is alive, however much of her recovery and healing would’ve been less intense had her doctors originally listened and she got treated correctly right away. Stoner has since encouraged others to argue and fight for their health.
Stoner's torso after a successful surgery.Photo credit: @sydneystonershelton
“I know it's difficult but keep advocating for yourself because no one else is going to get that done for you,” she said. "Find a new doctor, or whatever that may be. Find someone to listen to you because I know people that were diagnosed at 18 years old. The screening age needs to be lower or there shouldn't be one at all.”
A 2022 poll found that 52% of patients felt “ignored, dismissed, or not believed” when seeking medical treatment from their physician. This is especially an ongoing issue with women like Stoner who have had their pain dismissed by physicians as period pain, menopause, or some other issue when it turned out to be a serious deadly disease. There is even a term for it called “medical gaslighting.”
If you don’t feel you’re being heard by your doctor, there are some ways to help further advocate for yourself and get the treatment you need. Bring a family member or partner with you to the doctor to help act as your “lawyer” to advocate for help and as a witness to your pain. Prepare yourself for each appointment with questions ready to ask and be prepared to be vulnerable with your doctor to really drive home what you’ve been experiencing. If you don’t agree with what your doctor is diagnosing and you feel like your concerns aren’t being heard, tell them that directly and ask for further clarification if you have further questions. If you’re not making progress after two to three visits, you could consider finding a new physician.
Bringing a family member to your doctor's appointment could help you ensure that your needs are met.Photo credit: Canva
While it’s recommended to follow your doctor’s advice, it’s also important to speak out for yourself and advocate for proper care if something still doesn’t feel right.
This article originally appeared in May.
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Robin Williams performs for military men and women as part of a United Service Organization (USO) show on board Camp Phoenix in December 2007
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Will your current friends still be with you after seven years?
Professor shares how many years a friendship must last before it'll become lifelong
Think of your best friend. How long have you known them? Growing up, children make friends and say they’ll be best friends forever. That’s where “BFF” came from, for crying out loud. But is the concept of the lifelong friend real? If so, how many years of friendship will have to bloom before a friendship goes the distance? Well, a Dutch study may have the answer to that last question.
Sociologist Gerald Mollenhorst and his team in the Netherlands did extensive research on friendships and made some interesting findings in his surveys and studies. Mollenhorst found that over half of your friendships will “shed” within seven years. However, the relationships that go past the seven-year mark tend to last. This led to the prevailing theory that most friendships lasting more than seven years would endure throughout a person’s lifetime.
In Mollenhorst’s findings, lifelong friendships seem to come down to one thing: reciprocal effort. The primary reason so many friendships form and fade within seven-year cycles has much to do with a person’s ages and life stages. A lot of people lose touch with elementary and high school friends because so many leave home to attend college. Work friends change when someone gets promoted or finds a better job in a different state. Some friends get married and have children, reducing one-on-one time together, and thus a friendship fades. It’s easy to lose friends, but naturally harder to keep them when you’re no longer in proximity.
Some people on Reddit even wonder if lifelong friendships are actually real or just a romanticized thought nowadays. However, older commenters showed that lifelong friendship is still possible:
“I met my friend on the first day of kindergarten. Maybe not the very first day, but within the first week. We were texting each other stupid memes just yesterday. This year we’ll both celebrate our 58th birthdays.”
“My oldest friend and I met when she was just 5 and I was 9. Next-door neighbors. We're now both over 60 and still talk weekly and visit at least twice a year.”
“I’m 55. I’ve just spent a weekend with friends I met 24 and 32 years ago respectively. I’m also still in touch with my penpal in the States. I was 15 when we started writing to each other.”
“My friends (3 of them) go back to my college days in my 20’s that I still talk to a minimum of once a week. I'm in my early 60s now.”
“We ebb and flow. Sometimes many years will pass as we go through different things and phases. Nobody gets buttsore if we aren’t in touch all the time. In our 50s we don’t try and argue or be petty like we did before. But I love them. I don’t need a weekly lunch to know that. I could make a call right now if I needed something. Same with them.”
Maintaining a friendship for life is never guaranteed, but there are ways, psychotherapists say, that can make a friendship last. It’s not easy, but for a friendship to last, both participants need to make room for patience and place greater weight on their similarities than on the differences that may develop over time. Along with that, it’s helpful to be tolerant of large distances and gaps of time between visits, too. It’s not easy, and it requires both people involved to be equally invested to keep the friendship alive and from becoming stagnant.
As tough as it sounds, it is still possible. You may be a fortunate person who can name several friends you’ve kept for over seven years or over seventy years. But if you’re not, every new friendship you make has the same chance and potential of being lifelong.