Sam Bulloch, now 30, was diagnosed with a deadly cancer two decades after her mother died from breast cancer – an experience that shaped the young woman’s entire life.
Sam Bulloch, now 30, was diagnosed with a deadly cancer two decades after her mother died from breast cancer – an experience that shaped the young woman’s entire life.
An Australian woman who was diagnosed with aggressive cancer at the age of just 28 has revealed the symptom that ultimately tipped her off that something was not quite right.
Sam Bulloch, now 30, began to notice some bleeding when she went to the toilet – something that she putdown to haemorrhoids.
But, two years ago, her bathroom habits – such as a change in how many times she needed to use the restroom – made her stop and think. Bulloch realised she wasn’t eating as best as she could as she had just switched careers and was a busy new librarian, often opting for quick and easy, cheap meals, so she put it down to the changes in her diet.
But it was Bulloch’s depleted energy levels that eventually made her see a doctor, thinking she was having issues with her iron levels and even possibly anaemia – which had happened previously. It got to the point where the young librarian couldn’t walk up a flight of stairs without being puffed.
A GP sent her off for a blood test and an ultrasound, also under the belief that it could be to do with her iron levels. But when a tumour was found in Bulloch’s colon – as well as spots on her liver and lungs – doctors discovered she had stage four colon cancer.
“My first reaction was, ‘I knew it. When I started Googling after the ultrasound, when things started to get serious, I knew something was wrong’,” she told news.com.au.
Bulloch said it prompted her to look back at her health history and she realised the blood she found when she went to the bathroom likely wasn’t haemorrhoids as she initially suspected.
“When I found out it was cancer, my mind when to the worst place possible. And, just because it was so advanced at the time it was found, I just didn’t have a lot of hope, to be honest.”
It wasn’t Bulloch’s first brush with a deadly cancer. Two decades prior to her diagnosis, her mother was diagnosed with breast cancer.
“There’s a lot that I don’t remember from most of it and by that I just mean life felt quite normal all things considered,” she said.
Looking back, Bulloch said she is now in shock and awe at how her mother handled breast cancer with such grace. Eventually, it spread to her lungs and her brain.
“I do remember when she started to decline, and I feel like that’s what sticks in my mind the most – just watching her get sicker and sicker,” she recalled.
“I think the hardest part was just watching her change and not feel herself. Towards the end, it was impacting her speech and cognitive function. She just didn’t feel like the mum I knew in those last months.”
Two years ago, Sam Bulloch started noticing a change in her bathroom habits. She also previously had bleeding.
It was this knowledge of how brutal chemotherapy could be that scared Bulloch, as she’d had a front-row seat to her mum’s decline.
With cancer such as Bulloch’s, there are a few lines of standardised treatment. This includes two types of chemotherapy, with the third being to combine the two treatments for a more aggressive approach. She started off with a specific chemotherapy regime and after doing some genetic testing to see what else could be given alongside the treatment, a more targeted therapy was also applied.
Her body responded well to that, and she was treated for 10 months before its effectiveness was questioned by her doctors. Bulloch was then put on a different targeted therapy before she was eligible for surgery.
Depleted energy levels tipped her off to go to the doctor.
“We were doing the surgeries with the intention to remove all the cancer – which, spoiler, sadly didn’t happen,” she said.
The first surgery was called a high anterior resection, which saw all of her sigmoid colon and the top part of her rectum removed. Cancer was also removed from her liver. Two months later, she had another liver resection which saw the whole right lobe of her liver removed. There were plans to operate on her lungs, where cancer was also found, but at the last minute, her treatment options were switched. She is now on a different chemotherapy.
Bulloch is sharing her story on behalf of Australian Cancer Research Foundation’s (ACRF) Centre for Dynamic Immuno-Oncology at The Alfred in Melbourne. The centre looks at the potentially life-saving potential of immunotherapy, with a grant allowing researchers to watch cancer cells interact with a patient’s immune system in real time.
This removes the need for things such as blood or tissue samples and could allow researchers to find a more targeted approach for a person’s individual cancer.
Bulloch said one of the chemotherapies was among the first ever created and had been around for 60 years.
Sam Bulloch was diagnosed with stage four colon cancer.
“That’s a good thing in some ways, but it’s also really rubbish to receive. It makes you so sick,” she said.
“With chemotherapy, you kill everything and so you have a lot of collateral damage with that. Whereas with targeted therapies, it looks for something specific.
“And I mean, I’m no doctor, of course, but I’m convinced that the incredible response I had to treatment at the beginning was because of the targeted therapy.”
Bulloch had side effects to her treatment, such as a severe rash, but she said this was nothing compared to other types of treatment that left her bedridden and unable to have a semblance of regular life.
Carly du Toit, general manager of Australian Cancer Research Foundation, told news.com.au that immunotherapy is one of the most important breakthroughs in cancer treatment.
“But right now, it’s only effective in some patients and others experience severe side effects or minimal results,” she said.
“Until we unlock its full potential for all patients, we haven’t truly delivered on its promise. At ACRF, our mission is to change that. By supporting world-leading research, like the ACRF Centre for Dynamic Immuno-Oncology, we’re working to ensure that this lifesaving treatment becomes a reality for everyone who needs it.”
Colon cancer falls under the banner of bowel cancer, with the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners reporting that it was up 266% from the 1980s among 15- to 24-year-olds.
Bulloch said no two cancers were alike, so she believed treatment options needed to be tailored. The young librarian also said she is sharing her story to show that colon cancer can impact anyone and it’s important to be on the lookout for what the signs are. She said she’s had friends confide in her and she wants these types of conversations to be normalised.
“When it started happening to me, the first thing I felt was embarrassed, which is so silly, that I was embarrassed that I was having bleeding,” she said.
“I just let the embarrassment stop me from doing anything or telling anyone about it.”
She said she will continue to advocate so that others can have full autonomy over their health. And, for Bulloch, she said focusing on the everyday moments of joy while dealing with everything that has happened over the last two years is helping get her through it all. At the beginning of this year, she met her partner Sam on Hinge when both were initially set on deleting the app for good.
“It’s been a couple of months now, we’ve done so many fun things but also he’s sat with me in some really tough things,” she said.
“I went through losing my hair shortly after meeting him, getting bad scan results – like the poor thing’s really, like, not come into my life at a mountain-top moment.”
Sam is urging Australians to support Australian Cancer Research Foundation’s Tax Appeal to help fund lifesaving research, like immunotherapy. Donate here.
