A woman was diagnosed with colon cancer after years of stomach pain

For years, Naiké Vorbe has tried to relieve his abdominal pain. A dietitian advised him to cut gluten and lactose, but nothing worked.

The discomfort of the stomach was not new for her: for most of her adult life, she traveled constipated in diarrhea. “I was constantly one or the other,” said Vorbe, 42, at Business Insider. When she was pregnant with her second child, she saw a gynecologist. Its stools were explained as common pregnancy symptoms.

Then the pain intensified. After giving birth to her daughter, “going to the bathroom was more atrocious for me than giving birth,” said Vorbe. She kept touching her stomach, knowing that something was wrong. Lying, she felt a bump.

Shortly after, Vorbe, who lived in Haiti, reserved an appointment with a GI. He immediately told him to fly to Miami in Haiti and see a colon cancer specialist at the Cancer Center Center at the University of Miami.

At 31 months, two months after childbirth, Vorbe was diagnosed with stadium 3B colon cancer.

Fight for its fertility

In 2014, a few weeks after his colonoscopy revealed a malignant tumor, Vorbe underwent surgery to have part of his colon removed. Months later, cancer spread to its liver.

Vorbe had no idea what his immediate future would look like. She had a six-year-old daughter and a newborn in Haiti, as well as the rest of her family. Her fiancée at the time (now husband), a director, was traveling a lot for her first film.

She said she had asked Her doctor ends her appointments in chemotherapy on Thursday, so that she can return to Haiti on Friday and stay until Monday to be with her eldest daughter for the next 10 days. Then she would repeat the process.

By zooming even more, she was concerned about how chemotherapy would affect her fertility. She wanted more children, so she asked her doctor if she could have children after treatment.

She said he said It saves his life was the priority. “But for my life to be worth it, I need the answer to that,” said Vorbe.

He connected it to a gynecologist who administered a gonadotrophin liberation hormone (GNRH) each month, temporarily eliminated the ovary function and reduces the risk of infertility induced by chemotherapy.

Vorbe described him as a “big angel” in his life. “Each ball I launched, he worked with me,” she said.

She made 12 chemotherapy cycles. After her 4th, she had to remove part of her liver. She took a break in chemo for a few weeks to recover, marrying her husband in Haiti. Upon his return, the tumor on her liver had disappeared. The room was still removed from prudence, but when it was dissected, no trace of cancer could be found.

Vorbe wanted to leave chemotherapy earlier, now that tumors had disappeared. His doctor insisted on 12 cycles, to give him the best chances of long -term survival. Dr. Daniel Sussman, doctor of Vorbe and gastroenterologist at the health system of the University of Miami, told Bi that in 2014, when Vorbe was treated, 12 cycles of chemo were “probably considered to be what was necessary” to increase the probability of successful treatment.

An underlying genetic risk

As a child, Vorbe remembers having unexplained stomach pain. His father would take him to the doctor to be tested for verses and parasites. When she developed the bump in her abdomen in adulthood, a gynecologist first told her to try an enema.

“I was neglected and pushed next to it because I was so young, I looked healthy,” she said.

In addition, she said that discussions on stool are taboo in Haitian culture. “You don’t really talk about gastrointestinal problems.”

When it was diagnosed With colon cancer, she took a recommended panel of genes and learned that she was suffering from Lynch syndrome, a genetic condition without a symptom that increases the risk of developing colon cancer. She wondered if her grandmother, who died at 48, also had it. “No one ever understood that this is what happened to him,” said Vorbe.

Sussman, who specializes in Lynch syndrome and was involved in the diagnosis of the vorb, said that because the field of genetics is so young, whole families can have unknown genetic predispositions for certain cancers. Naiké “ended up being this first person in the family to undergo this genetic assessment,” he said.

Her mother was diagnosed with uterine cancer earlier

Vorbe, now a mother of five, has been in remission for 10 years. As an animal cancer of the colon, she obtains the recommended annual colonoscopies. She also gets endoscopy every two years because Lynch syndrome is at risk of developing other cancers.

She said that learning Lynch syndrome not only helped her better understand her diagnosis. It also helped his mother, who has the same genetic risk, to receive a diagnosis of uterine cancer early.

His mother had a polyp in his uterus which was left alone because he had not grown up over the years. When she told her gynecologist that Vorbe had Lynch syndrome and was treated for colon cancer, her doctor immediately planned a biopsy. Vorbe’s mother has received a diagnosis of cancer of step 1 and had her uterus removed.

Vorbe said his family was what made him go through treatments. She remembers having thought “There is no way I can die: I have these two beautiful little girls right in front of me. I want to see them grow.”

Although he was more than two hours of flight, his family generated it throughout its recovery. Her godmother stole with her at her first chemo meeting. His cousins ​​flew to Miami to be in the house after the appointment, to cheer him up. In Haiti, her sister-in-law would take care of Vorbe’s baby overnight, then take him to the vorbe in the morning.

“I had so much love and light around me, it just brought me,” said Vorbe.