Even after getting the flare under control, Michael Sheridan's bowel movements didn't seem right. It was early onset colon cancer., a type of inflammatory bowel disease. Through “trial and error,” he eventually found ways to control his symptoms. Suddenly in 2019, they returned.“I started to have a flare up and it came out of the blue and hit me hard,” Sheridan, 36, of Lancaster, Ohio tells TODAY.com. “I was able to get it back under control relatively quickly within a few months.
After the holidays, Sheridan sought out oncologists to come up with a treatment plan. Some wanted to remove his entire colon because it would lower his risk of recurrence. But the tumor only appeared to be in the sigmoid colon. It seemed the rest of his colon was healthy. Doctors gave him a temporary ostomy, a surgically-implanted pouch that collects bodily waste outside of the body, to help his colon recover. Healing felt tough at times especially because he had three children at the time, including a 6-month-old daughter.
He kept detailed records of how he felt after treatment and monitored symptoms, including neuropathy — nerve damage sometimes brought on by chemo. When the neuropathy began, he worried about how the changes would affect him in the long term and spoke to his doctors about what they could do to address it.