41-year-old shares story of colorectal cancer diagnosis, increasingly common in younger patients

ATLANTA — Adam Keating lives for his family: seeing historic sites and hitting the high seas with his wife, Lauren, and their two children. His family and faith kept the 41-year-old Keating going even when something inside felt wrong. 

“Family is literally the lynchpin and pinnacle of my life, the cornerstone of my life along with my faith,” Keating said. “It’s what wakes me up in the morning and keeps me going throughout the day. This is the last thing I thought I’d be having to worry about the first quarter of this year. I’m active, healthy, try to work out a lot. It kind of took me by surprise.”

Keating described symptoms that he said lasted at least six to nine months, noting some changes in bowel habits. He made an appointment with a gastroenterologist, at the suggestion of his wife, and eventually he got a colonoscopy. 

“They found an egg-size tumor in my colon, and it was removed about two weeks later through surgery,” Keating said. “It caught it early enough during screening, so the surgery ended up being curative and a serious issue got corrected before it turned into something even more serious.”

Surgeons ended up removing the tumor and ten inches of Keating’s colon. Dr. Wally Curran, chief of oncology at Piedmont Healthcare, said 150,000 people are diagnosed with colorectal cancer in the United States each year. Despite advances in care, he said about a third of patients die from the disease. Curran called it alarming that there’s a 2% increase of younger colorectal cancer patients every year.

“Thirty years ago, about 11% of all patients with that disease were under 54. Now it’s up to 20%,” Curran said. “For people under age 50, there seems to be a trend of higher advanced cases of cancer, partially because healthy people in their 30s and 40s don’t necessarily recognize the symptoms suggestive of cancer in the colon. It could be the modern American diet. Some people believe it has to do with the intestinal environment of our small and large bowels being different than a few decades ago. We’re just struck by the fact that we’re seeing younger and younger patients.”

Curran said in Georgia, about 60% of people who should be getting screenings are actually getting them. He urged people to regularly check their bowel movements to make sure all appears well and start getting screened at the recommended age of 45. Anyone at higher risk, carrying a family history or exposure to radiation, may need a screening much earlier.

“For people who have a family history or a history of polyps or exposure to radiation in the past, the age of colonoscopy may even be lower,” Curran said. “Any blood in the stool should alert a call to your physician. Change in difficulty and evacuating, change in the appearance of your stool.”

Keating must undergo yearly colonoscopies, but that pales in comparison to getting to spend the rest of his life with the ones he loves.

“I was able to put my pride aside, because this isn’t an area that most men want to deal with or talk about,” Keating said. “It narrows your focus 100%. It makes you focus on what’s important in life, and if I could get the word out about early screening and awareness and going to get it done and not procrastinating, then it’s all worth it.”