Sharon Finds Joy
- Sharon Osbourne, 68, was diagnosed with colon cancer in 2002.
- She recently shared a sweet video of Ugandan children dancing to help spread awareness of the need for support at their orphanage.
- Having a positive mindset while battling cancer can help improve your prognosis.
Sharon’s Colon Cancer
Sharon was diagnosed with colon cancer in 2002 and underwent surgery to treat the disease. Colon cancer treatment options vary depending on how far along the cancer is when it is diagnosed. The disease may be treated via surgery, radiation therapy, chemotherapy, or immunotherapy.
Related: Colon Cancer: Overview
Dr. Heather Yeo, a colorectal surgeon and surgical oncologist at Weill Cornell Medicine and NewYork-Presbyterian, tells SurvivorNet, “While early-stage colorectal cancer has really good survival rates, there are a couple of nuances with treatment that it’s important to understand and know so you can figure out and be the best judge of your own cancer care.”
“Stage one [colon] cancer means that it is localized, and it hasn’t spread deep,” explains Dr. Yeo. “So the way colon cancer spreads, instead of the size of the cancer mattering, it’s the depth. So it’s how deep it goes into the wall of the colon. Early stage one cancer has not gone deep and basically hasn’t broken through some of the muscle layer of the colon. So if it is stage one, it is cured by surgery. We take out the piece of the intestine with the colon in it. Then they’re done. That’s their treatment. Generally, patients who have stage 1 cancer do very well. They have over a 90% five-year survival rate, meaning that they’re almost always cured by the surgery.”
Keeping a Positive Mindset
Keeping a positive mindset while battling cancer can be beneficial to treatment and prognosis. Dr. Zuri Murrell, a colorectal surgeon at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, tells SurvivorNet that staying positive matters, and can make a difference. He says, “My patients who thrive, even with stage four cancer, from the time that they, about a month after they’re diagnosed, I kind of am pretty good at seeing who is going to be okay.”
Dr. Murrell says, “Now doesn’t that mean I’m good at saying that the cancer won’t grow. But I’m pretty good at telling what kind of patient are going to still have this attitude and probably going to live the longest, even with bad, bad disease. And those are patients who, they have gratitude in life.”
Showing gratitude, as Osbourne does, can be one way to keep a positive mindset while going through cancer.
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