“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 has just been diagnosed with stage four colorectal cancer, a preventable cancer.
He was 51 years old.
A resident of Dunn, she remembered how her case put the small town to her ear and taught her at the beginning of the fight against cancer how valuable her advocacy could be.
Word quickly spread about the operation and its diagnosis.
Apparently, people saw it as a warning story and began receiving colonoscopes.
“I was later contacted by a pharmacist friend of mine in town who said immediately after my operation, when everyone started hearing about me, that it had almost sold out of the colonoscopy,” Goff recalled. .
This is one of the reasons why he happily joined forces with the people from Fight Colorectal Cancer.
And now, during National Colorectal Cancer Awareness Month, she is fighting hard not only for her own life, but for other lives as well.
When he turned 50, this was the recommended age for a colonoscopy. But he postponed it because he had no family history of cancer.
“I found out that if you have a colon, you can have colon cancer,” Goff warned.
Just a few months after her diagnosis, the American Cancer Society reduced the recommended age for the first colonoscopy to 45 years.
According to her doctors, it was probably the approximate age when her cancer began to develop.
In retrospect, she said: “If I had reached the age of 45, I would probably have found early polyps, and they could be removed. And that would have prevented the development of cancer. “
She wants everyone 45 and older to receive colonoscopes and said worries about the awkward or painful procedure are no longer justified.
“Preparation has become much easier,” she said. “And the procedure itself, you’re anesthetized, you’re eliminated. So you don’t feel anything.”
Goff mentioned that people under the age of 45 should be aware of the symptoms and that they can do things to avoid colon cancer.
“A lot of young people get cancer,” Goff said. “There are some kids who are, you know, teenagers and preadolescents with stage four colon cancer, a lot of 20s and 30s. So people need to know what the signs and symptoms are.”
While talking to ABC11 about her trip, there were bottles of experimental chemotherapy capsules near her home in Dunn.
She recently joined a clinical trial of the new chemotherapy after other chemotherapeutic treatments became ineffective.
He refuses to stop fighting.
“In stage four, this is a cancer that has a 14% survival rate,” Goff said. “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 his efforts to inform others help save lives, he will no doubt provide additional inspiration in her fight to save her.
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