Elissa Robinson, 39, knows what it’s like to take each day as it is.
She wakes up every day being a mom to 8-year-old Harper., a wife to Russell., a web editor at the Detroit Free Press and living with stage 4 colon cancer.
“Cancer happens to people that you hear about other people um doesn’t happen doesn’t happen to you, you know not at 37 years old,” said Robinson.
No, Robinson is not a typical colon cancer patient. She was just 37 when she was diagnosed with no symptoms. It was discovered when she had an ovarian cyst removed.
She was actually recording the doctor to remember post-surgery instructions when she got the news. Initially, the pathologist thought it was ovarian cancer, and then a second opinion went out to the University of Michigan, and they said its colon cancer.
“It was a gut punch an absolute gut punch and I just I cried and she left in the room and I stopped the recording on my phone and I called my husband and I said you need to come now,” said Robinson. “That was the day that changed my life forever. You know I was sitting there with a doctor as well I told her I said my brother died in 2010. With no other siblings, I cannot leave my parents. I cannot leave my parents childless.”
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It brought Robinson to her knees only to get back up for the fight of her life.
“So immediately it was what do we need to do? Who do we need to talk to? Who are the best people out there?”
Robinson’s cancer treatment has taken her from the University of Michigan to Memorial Sloan Kettering in New York. It’ll be two years since that diagnosis in May.
“Chronicling my journey online has been really important to me,” said Robinson. “Its almost like, people thank me for sharing my journey and I’m like I should be thanking you because you guys online are the support system online.”
From walking a 5k with her supportive friends and raising money for cancer research while still hooked up to a chemo pump to gracing the big screen in D.C. Among the sea of blue for all those who fight colon cancer, to tough chemo days to the recent blow of losing her hair.
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Through it all, Robinson never misses a chance to encourage people to get their colon checked.
“A lot of people have told me that they’ve gotten their colon checked after seeing my posts and after me preaching to them over and over again to get a colonoscopy,” said Robinson.
Friday is wear blue for colorectal cancer awareness day -- encourage those you love to get screened for colon cancer.
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