ELLICOTT CITY, Md. — Between goats, chickens and beer, there's a lot of moving parts on Manor Hill Brewing in Ellicott City.
"How am I going to do this and be a mom and still work,” said Rachael Mull, the Chief Financial Officer for the family business.
Mull's daily routine was turned upside down when she was diagnosed with colorectal cancer at 39 years old, about 5 years younger than the average-risk aged adult.
"It was a total shock. It wasn't something that we thought oh maybe this is cancer,” said Mull.
In 2017, Mull went in for a procedure to get her kidney stones removed, that's when her doctors found a tumor. With no family history and usually a clean bill of health, she couldn't believe the news.
"My son's 7th birthday party was the next and I remember not wanting to tell anyone,” said Mull.
The American Cancer Society reports an alarming rise in young adults with colorectal cancer.
"People don't want to talk about their poop. When you're young and you're busy and you’re working and you have kids, it’s so easy to ignore and not go to the doctor. I hardly had any symptoms and I was stage 3,” said Mull.
Colorectal cancer is the number 1 cause of cancer death in men under 50 years old and the 2nd leading cause in women for the same age group.
"It used to be about 10 percent of people who were diagnosed with colorectal cancer were under the age of 55, now it's getting closer to 20 percent,” said Dr. Otis Brawley, a Professor of Oncology at the Johns Hopkins Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center.
While there is no definitive explanation for the surge, Dr. Brawley points to obesity rates and a rise in people eating more processed food.
"We know that certain types of fungi that are in food can cause cancer. It may very well be how we preserve our food. Over the last 30, 40 years people have been taking antibiotics. Sometimes antibiotics that wouldn't have been recommended. So they have changed the bacterial flora of their colon and that may very well affect risk of people getting colon cancer,” said Dr. Brawley.
Dr. Brawley, who served as chief medical and scientific officer for the American Cancer Society, is one of the co-authors of the first recommendation to move the screening guideline from 55 to 45 years old.
"People tell me that there are certain counties in Maryland that don't have a GI doctor who can do a colonoscopy available to them. I have had to talk to people who said I'm not getting screened because there's no GI doctor in my county," said Dr. Brawley.
He says if a GI doctor isn't an option, you can also get a stool blood test every year or a stool DNA test every 3 years.
"A lot of people say one day at a time. Somebody said sometimes it's one minute at a time,” said Mull.
After her diagnosis, came a grueling 2 years.
"Your body is so beat up. I had to move my ovaries. I had radiation. I had 6 months of chemo, then the big surgery to remove the tumor and remove a good part of my colon and rectum, all of that got pulled out,” said Mull.
She says her support system is what kept her fighting. 5 years later, she is now cancer-free.
"It's treatable but if you don't know, it can be too late,” said Mull.
