Amber Kissell
- Amber Kissell, 45, experienced several symptoms of colon cancer in her mid-30s.
- After being dismissed by multiple doctors, she was diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer.
- She is now in remission, but said she never stops worrying about it coming back.
Right before Amber Kissell had her second child, she noticed some troubling changes. At 35, she’d alternate between constipation and diarrhea — symptoms she chalked up to pregnancy.
After giving birth, she found blood in her stool, one of the most common signs of colon cancer. She immediately started booking doctors’ appointments. A primary care physician told her she just had a fissure, even though she’d lost 10 pounds with no explanation. Then she saw a colorectal surgeon, who gave her a similar answer after a physical exam: she had hemorrhoids.
“In the back of my head, I was thinking ‘something isn’t right,'” Kissell, 45, told Business Insider. She went back to him two more times, explicitly asking if she might have colon cancer. He reassured her that she was “too young” and that her insurance wouldn’t cover a colonoscopy because she was under the recommended screening age (then 50, now 45).
Shortly after, Kissell started feeling lightheaded every time she stood up. “I started to wake up in the morning and feel like I had the flu,” she said. She relied more on her husband to take care of their 1-year-old because she would wake up exhausted.
After a particularly bad dizzy spell, Kissell was on her way to the ER when she called her colorectal doctor. He advised her to go home, wait a few days, and come in for a colonoscopy instead.
She still remembers the hallway she stood in when she got the call about her lab results and learned she had stage 4 colon cancer. The cancer had spread from her colon to her liver and lymph nodes.
“My children were 8 and 16 months,” she said. “Your whole life flashes before your eyes.”
Kissell began treatment immediately and asked not to know details of her timeline because she didn’t want to “dwell” on it. Then, a surprising turn of events: her chemotherapy completely shrank her tumors. Kissell has now been in remission for close to a decade.
Seeking other opinions
Amber Kissell
When she was first diagnosed, Kissell sought out multiple opinions for treatment.
The first doctor she met with was warm and told her he’d treat her like family: he suggested starting with aggressive chemotherapy before performing any surgery on her colon or liver. The second one wanted to begin with surgery and “cut as much out as possible.” She claims a third looked at her and flatly asked why she wasn’t crying. “You know you’re going to die, right?” she remembers him saying.
Kissell chose the first doctor because he seemed the most compassionate.
Because her cancer was so advanced, Kissell was put on palliative care, which was focused on shrinking her tumors with the goal of improving her quality of life rather than curing her cancer. The plan was to perform six rounds of chemotherapy, followed by surgery on her colon and liver, then finish with another six rounds of chemo.
Kissell’s main concern was her family. “When you tell a mom she has stage 4 cancer, the only thing she worries about is her children,” she said. Not knowing how soon things might progress, she filled two buckets with gifts, journals, and blankets for her kids.
Striving for normality
Amber Kissell
As Kissell underwent treatment, she sought to “keep life as normal as possible” for her family — something she felt was easier given her young age.
She continued to work as a hospital nurse, bringing her chemo pump bag with her and occasionally taking breaks in her car when nausea set in. “I wouldn’t say it was the easiest thing in the world,” she said, but she preferred it to being alone with her thoughts.
After work, she and her husband would try to stay active with their kids. “We would ride bikes and take walks, we’d do everything we could,” she said.
Kissell, who lives in the Indiana town she grew up in, had a strong community of friends and family to help her focus on her well-being. “When I was first diagnosed, I was scared out of my mind about bills,” she said. She was worried about losing their house or cars, or that she’d eventually be unable to afford treatment.
Everyone stepped in. A local nonprofit organization held a concert to fundraise for Kissell and coworkers started a GoFundMe for her. Friends brought dinners.
“I will never be able to repay everyone who was so kind,” Kissell said.
Rare, encouraging results
Amber Kissell
After her fourth round of chemo, Kissell’s scans revealed unexpected results: all seven small tumors in her liver were gone, as were the ones in her lymph nodes. The primary tumor in her colon also shrank significantly.
Her doctor adjusted her treatment plan: she’d now finish all her rounds of chemotherapy before surgery on her colon. After that, all signs of cancer disappeared.
Dr. Pashtoon Kasi, the Medical Director of Gastrointestinal Medical Oncology at City of Hope in Irvine, California, told Business Insider that neoadjuvant chemotherapy — chemotherapy before any surgery to kill off any cancer cells that have spread — can sometimes effectively lead to remission. While Kasi didn’t treat Kissell, he said that if even a small tumor is near an important blood vessel, surgery can be more successful if the tumor can shrink first.
Full remission after neoadjuvant chemotherapy is still rare. In Kasi’s experience, performing all chemotherapy before other treatments only “really pushed the envelope” for about a third of eligible colorectal cancer patients. Kissell said even her doctor was surprised by her results, telling her that she was his first patient to respond like this.
Almost nine years later, Kissell is still in remission and has just reached the point where she only needs an annual checkup from her oncologist.
Still, she said it was difficult to adjust to life after treatment.
“It was so bad at the beginning — my finger could hurt and I was calling my oncologist,” she said. “It took forever to get over that.”
The experience taught her to embrace time with her family. While she used to hate taking photos, that changed with cancer.
“Thankfully, I’ve been able to create lots of memories over the past eight years,” she said. “I pray I get many more.”
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