Being a Mom with Cancer: Sarah's Story
Written by Melissa Schenkman, MPH, MSJ
Sarah (second from the right) and her family.
Sarah Broadus is a strong believer in the power of showing grace.
As a mom to four beautiful children ranging in age from kindergarten to senior year and a client manager for ShutterBooth Atlanta, everyday has been a busy, balancing act. But one that got far more complex after the seemingly-healthy 36-year-old was completely blindsided with a diagnosis of Stage IV colon cancer.
While the role of caregiver came far more naturally to her than being the one cared for, Broadus had to learn to give herself grace and accept it from others, as she underwent aggressive treatment.
The instrumental support of her husband of 19 years and her children who are “the lights of her life,” have helped to light her way throughout a challenging battle for health—one with unique twists and turns
Now, she shares her cancer journey with us, as she gracefully balances advocating for colorectal cancer (CRC) prevention and increasing awareness of early-age onset CRC as a Fight CRC Ambassador, all while teaching her children lifelong lessons of the importance caring for others, even when making a difference comes out of the most challenging of circumstances.
Early Life and Health
Broadus always has considered herself to be pretty healthy. For most of her life, she has been a vegetarian or a pescatarian with “a few moments of Oreos” every now and then—something many millennials who’ve gone mostly plant-based, but still enjoy their sweets can definitely relate to.
While she has not been a stickler for working out at the gym by any means, she is a community cheerleading coach. “So, I am constantly moving and helping in our community,” Broadus told me.
Yet in all the times she has taken part in community efforts, colorectal cancer nor early-age onset CRC was never something that was publicly talked about or brought to her attention.
“Obviously, we know about breast cancer, ovarian cancer, and uterine cancer, but I had no idea about colon cancer. I had never heard of it. I didn’t even know that was a thing,” Broadus said.
She got a “crash course” in learning about what a big thing colon cancer was though, starting in May 2021.
Symptoms and Diagnosis
After giving birth to her fourth child in 2018, Sarah experienced a lot of fatigue. This seemed natural given that she was a busy person and now, a mom of four.
She went to get evaluated by an endocrinologist and was diagnosed with Hashimoto’s disease. It made sense given the fatigue. She also was diagnosed with a gluten intolerance for bloating after her son’s birth.
None of this though would tip her off that there was anything more serious to be concerned about. Then, on Mother’s Day 2021, of all days, something changed.
Broadus, who is well-versed in what labor pains feel like, experienced severe abdominal pain and went to the ER. To her, it felt like contractions. So, she thought it could be an ectopic pregnancy.
“I pulled my ER doctor very close to me because they were looking all over my body, and I said: ‘Something is going on in that area, because I've had four kids. I know what a contraction is and this is what it felt like.’ And thankfully, he listened to me and did a CT scan,” Broadus said. “That’s when he discovered a football-sized tumor inside of my uterus.”
She stayed for observation overnight and was told that they did not think the tumor was cancerous. However, it needed to come out and then some. She had a laparoscopic hysterectomy scheduled for the following Friday.
Given her age, a full hysterectomy (when the ovaries are removed) was an option, not a requirement. That’s because once the ovaries are removed it automatically puts a woman into menopause years ahead of schedule.
“But my husband and I opted to go ahead and do a full hysterectomy because of the fact that we have four kids. And if we hadn't done that, we would not have been able to find the colon cancer because it wasn't the tumor in my uterus that brought back the cancer, it was a small quarter size spot on the backside of my ovary,” Broadus explained.
Three days after her hysterectomy she got a call from her OBGYN to come in immediately and in her gut, she just knew it was cancer. She was told that because the colon cancer was discovered on another one of her organs outside of the colon, her ovary, that it meant she had Stage IV colon cancer, and it was aggressive.
Sarah Broadus
“I never had any rectal bleeding or change in my bowels, nothing you would commonly think of as CRC symptoms. It was just bloating and fatigue, which we now know as signs of colorectal cancer. But I had no bleeding whatsoever; no abdominal pain on a normal basis. It was just an early, quick onset,” Broadus said.
“I had cut out all my Gluten after being told my bloating was due to gluten intolerance. I did everything I could possibly do, when in fact, it was just cancer, and nobody thought to test for that.”
Her doctor explained that she had a very small chance of survival if she did not begin treatment immediately. He was wonderful in quickly putting together a team of the best doctors in the Atlanta area—ones he said he would personally have treat his own daughter.
“I appreciated him so much during that because obviously when you get this news, your mind is just going crazy with ‘What do I do next?’ He made it so that my steps were already taken care of,” Broadus said. “We started the next day meeting with specialists and getting prepared. And, we did the colonoscopy, where they found the primary tumor.”
Broadus was under 45—the current recommended age for first colonoscopy for average-risk patients—so her first one was to find and remove a tumor.
Treatment Journey
Since she was diagnosed at Stage IV, she underwent very aggressive treatment. Within a three-month period, she had three surgeries, including removing her sigmoid colon where the tumor was located and chemotherapy.
While she lost a lot of weight throughout and lost her beautiful, long blonde hair within just two rounds of chemotherapy (a common first line treatment for CRC, a combination of 5fu with Oxaliplatin or “Folfox”), the rest of her experience in starting of chemotherapy was very different from everybody else’s stories.
“I would sleep for three or four days straight, and I couldn't function. I knew something was wrong with me because you hear all the other stories and this doesn't sound normal,” Broadus said.
She developed E. coli and ended up in the hospital. “While I was in the hospital, I pretty much thought I was going to die because I had blood transfusions, and they were trying to figure out what was going on with me, which actually led to a diagnosis of having DPD deficiency.”
It’s a rare deficiency where your liver is missing an enzyme that breaks down chemo.
Once they knew, they scaled down her chemo to be given in baby doses. It instantly made a world of difference for Broadus. She noticeably began to start sprouting some new hair growth on her head. Her energy returned, and she could do things again.
“Most people with DPD deficiency can handle very few rounds of chemo period. So, we were very blessed that it continued to do its job,” she said.
All in all, she went through 10 rounds of chemotherapy. And very thankfully a CT scan following that showed no evidence of disease.
Sarah after surgery and during her first phase of chemotherapy treatments. She received 10 rounds of 5fu with Oxaliplatin.
Parenting with Cancer
Balancing motherhood and grueling cancer treatment was no easy feat for the millennial mom. It meant having to have discussions with her children about topics Broadus never would have expected to talk with them about and having a mom who was not always physically well enough to take care of them.
“It is absolutely the worst title that you can ever get to be the mom with cancer,” Broadus reflected. “It affects your family in so many ways. My kids have had to grow up a lot quicker than they wanted to. They've had to have discussions about death and life, and wishes and stuff that they don't want to typically have and that most kids don't have to worry about.”
She also points out that her children have had to learn to become advocates for a disease that they knew nothing about three years ago. It’s something that her oldest daughter, now a high school senior, took to heart and has been working to bring school-wide CRC education and awareness to her peers.
Her children have had to still show up at school on days when she could not get out of bed, and their teachers have had to give them a pass because they might not understand what it is like to have a mom at home with cancer. She believes these experiences have transferred into how they treat people and in thinking about how they would want to be treated on their hardest days, especially for her two oldest daughters.
“My older girls have definitely learned from this experience about the importance of showing other people grace and treat others the way you want to be treated. Because you never know what somebody's going through,” Broadus said.
As for her youngest, who she affectionately calls her “little man” and is in kindergarten, he doesn’t know what’s going on, but she thinks he is starting to gather that mom is sick on certain days. Due to this, he knows that he can’t jump on her or do those kinds of things. So, she feels he is even learning a bit of compassion at a six-year-old level.
“As a mom, you feel guilty at times that you put their life trajectory on a whole different path,” Broadus said. “It's not always sunshine and rainbows, but you also get a sense of pride out of it, because your kids do understand that this is serious and it affects our family as a whole. You see the growth that they have, and that they can take something that's really bad, and they can use it to educate others, and they can turn it into something really good.”
Sarah enjoying life on vacation with her family on at Disney.
Maintenance and Remission
As she took her first steps into survivorship after completing chemotherapy and her CT scan showed no evidence of disease, Broadus was placed on a new regimen to keep her cancer-free. She immediately started a chemo pill called Solera, and Avastin, which is an immunotherapy.
For a year, she would alternate between taking pills of Solera for a week and then having Avastin, then a week off and then starting the regimen again. It kept her in remission until a new scan a year later in 2022 showed her cancer was back.
Cancer’s return and a new treatment
As Broadus will tell you, her cancer came back in the craziest way.
She was tender to the touch on her side, which makes complete sense after not only having back-to-back surgeries but even more since the doctors used the same incision sites for both her hysterectomy and colon surgery. They watched it for a month or two, but it wasn’t getting any better. So, they did a scan.
“Cancer came back in my scar tissue. So, not in another tumor, not in another organ. It was just a bunch of little cells that got trapped inside of my scar tissue. Thank goodness.” Broadus said.
Her doctors put her on the next line of chemo treatment, which is a 48-hour chemo treatment where she goes home with a pump for two days. She’s been on it twice a month for a little more than a year now.
“It’s not getting worse, but it’s not getting better as quickly as we would like. It’s maintaining it, so the cancer cells are safely trapped in scar tissue. We’re making sure that it doesn’t escape anywhere else in the body,” she said.
Sarah with members of her family and other CRC advocates in Washington, DC, where they met with members of Congress to advocate from more research dollars for CRC and lowering the age for first colonoscopy among other key issues discussed at Fight CRC’s Call On Congress in March 2024.
Becoming a Cancer Advocate and Spreading Awareness
The story of CRC that has yet to be fully understand by the public, in her view, is one of its seriousness.
“There are too many people who still think it’s for old men and that women can’t get it and that young people can’t get it. And we have friends who were diagnosed at 17 and 18 years old,” Broadus pointed out.
She stresses how important it is to talk about our poop and to bring awareness to colorectal cancer in young people—something she does as a Fight CRC Ambassador, which she became in 2023.
Fight CRC was the first resources that she found when searching for information online after she was diagnosed. Through them, she was able to be educated about CRC, biomarkers, immunotherapies, and importantly how to advocate for herself with her doctors.
“Fight CRC gave me a sense of empowerment,” Broadus recalled. So, when they put out an application to become an ambassador, she jumped at the chance.
“I knew that God had put me in this place for a reason and that I was not just given cancer to be given cancer. I'm a firm believer that we all have a purpose in life. I thought, well…I have a voice, and I like to talk to people. So, maybe this is my chance to take something really, really negative, and turn it into something positive and be able to teach other people about colon cancer and advocate for them,” Broadus said. “That way a 36-year-old mom has heard about colon cancer at least, and will not be in the dark like I was.”
While it was one more thing for Broadus to balance with her already full plate, especially in the first year when she had to travel a lot, being a Fight CRC Ambassador was 100% worth it. And she would never change that.
“It was extremely important to take this—my cancer—and turn it into work,” Broadus said. “I’ve learned so much as an ambassador, and I feel like quite seriously, it gave me a lot of empowerment over my health.”
In addition to the continued need for CRC education, Broadus wholeheartedly believes the screening age for a first colonoscopy should be lowered tremendously.
“I think we should minimally lower it to 18. I’ve been getting pap smears since I was 16 years old, and I feel like this is part of the preventative health measures that we should be able to get, having colonoscopies as soon as you need them,” she said.
“I think that doctors have it wrong, where we focus on, ‘Let’s try this or try that and then let’s do a colonoscopy.’ No, let’s start at a colonoscopy and let’s rule out colon cancer. I think we could save a lot more lives that way.”
Words of Wisdom
Along the way she has made some of the greatest friends who are fellow survivors of early-age onset CRC. From her experiences, she believes it is incredibly important for millennials and Gen Z to pay attention to some key things to protect themselves:
Don’t just look out for blood in your stool! Know the other symptoms of CRC, including anemia, fatigue, and bloating.
Don’t be scared to go to a doctor if you are having any of these symptoms. Tell your doctor that you want to get a FIT test, a blood test, or something to rule out CRC because the number of cases are increasing in younger people.
Look at your poop and keep track of any changes in a notebook. Normalize this! She knows this sounds weird, but it is really important. Note any changes in size and style of your stool, or if you have not had a bowel movement in several days.
A very excited Sarah when she officially became a Fight CRC Ambassador in 2023.
“Early-onset colorectal cancer is a huge epidemic. It is growing like wildfire. Just in the last three years, I've made 100+ friends between the ages of 29 and 45 that have been diagnosed. None of us are old enough by standard to get a colonoscopy, and the majority of us are stage four,” Broadus said.
Broadus’s story as a young, working mom of four, who in the midst of it all has battled Stage IV colorectal cancer is powerful and inspiring.
Her ability to triumph over immense challenges and to find a new calling as a Fight CRC Ambassador, making the time to share lessons learned from her experiences and educate fellow millennials and parents about early-age onset colorectal cancer, is leading the way in teaching us how to navigate our health in our busiest time of life, as our generation faces a cancer epidemic.
It has also changed her perspective on life and how she spends her time, giving each of us trying to strike a healthy balance many things to think about.
“So many people today are into the diet culture and obsessed with eating healthy. I ate healthy, and I still got cancer,” Broadus said. “Enjoy dessert. Last night we had three desserts, and it made me very happy!”
“My biggest takeaway from being diagnosed with colon cancer is that life is super quick. You think at 36 years old you have forever, but it got put into perspective real quick that you might not have forever. So, enjoy every day. It’s not worth getting stressed out,” Broadus said.
“I used to be a workaholic who worked 60-plus hours a week. It’s not worth it. Saving up for retirement is the financially responsible thing to do, but take the trip. Don’t put off the things that you want to do until tomorrow because you might not have tomorrow.”
Subscribe to the YMyHealth newsletter to stay up to date on everything that’s health-related for millennials!
