The pain was so sharp that Chris Williams took himself to the hospital.
It was a Tuesday evening in September 2021 when Williams started to feel throbbing abdominal pain and nausea. By the next morning, it had gotten worse.
“I had to go to the ER,” said Williams, who lives in Brooklyn. -At the hospital, he was diagnosed with appendicitis and had his appendix surgically removed. About a week later, he met with his medical team to get the staples removed and discuss next steps – and that’s when he received shocking news.
“They found a tumor sitting on my appendix, and they biopsied that tumor and determined it was cancer,” said Williams, who was 48 at the time.
“It was actually a blessing,” he said. “This was really just a godsend, in my eyes, and a blessing for me to detect the tumor – for the tumor to trigger my appendix to almost rupture for them to find it – because later on, they discovered it was stage III. Had it stayed in me for a while longer, it would have been stage IV,” which is the most advanced stage of cancer and more difficult to treat.
Williams, who is now cancer-free after finishing treatment in November 2022, is among a growing group of appendix cancer patients in the United States who were diagnosed at a young age.