“Every cancer patient wants to know how long I have,” the Harnett County woman recalled, adding, “and it’s a question we don’t really want to ask, but we want to know. And I was told maybe 10, 15 years at best. “
Goff had just been diagnosed with stage four colorectal cancer, a cancer that is preventable.
She was 51.
A resident of Dunn, she remembered how her cause turned the town upside down and taught her early on in her fight against cancer how valuable her advocacy could be.
News quickly spread of her surgery and diagnosis.
Apparently, people took it as a cautionary tale and started getting colonoscopies.
“I was later contacted by a pharmacist friend of mine in town who said that shortly after my surgery, when everyone started hearing about me, she was running out of a colonoscopy,” Goff recalls.
That’s one of the reasons she loved to join forces with the folks at Fight Colorectal Cancer.
And now, during National Colorectal Cancer Awareness Month, she’s fighting hard not only for her own life, but for other lives as well.
When she turned 50, that was the recommended age for a colonoscopy. But she put it off because she had no family history of cancer.
“I’ve learned that if you have a colon, you could potentially get colon cancer,” Goff cautioned.
Just months after her diagnosis, the American Cancer Society lowered the recommended age for a first colonoscopy to 45.
It was, according to her doctors, probably the approximate age at which her cancer started to develop.
In retrospect, she said, “If I had turned 45, they probably would have found early polyps, and they could have been removed. And that would have prevented them from developing into cancer.”
She wants everyone 45 and older to get colonoscopies, and said concerns about the procedure being uncomfortable or painful are no longer warranted.
“Preparation has become much easier,” she said. “And the procedure itself, you are numb, you are unconscious.
Goff noted that people under the age of 45 should still be aware of the symptoms and there are things they can do to prevent colon cancer.
“A lot of younger people get cancer,” said Goff. “There are some kids who are, you know, teens and young teens with stage four colon cancer, many in their 20s and 30s. So people need to know what the signs and symptoms are.”
While talking to ABC11 about her journey, there were bottles of experimental chemotherapy capsules close by at her home in Dunn.
She recently took part in a clinical trial of the new chemotherapy after other chemotherapy treatments were no longer effective.
She refuses to stop fighting.
“At stage four, this is a cancer with a 14% survival rate,” said Goff. ‘But my husband says I’m bad at statistics, and I don’t want to be one. So I don’t listen to that part of it. ‘
So heed her warnings, because if her efforts to educate others help save lives, it will no doubt provide additional inspiration in her struggle to save her own.
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