Battling Advanced Cancer With Added Purpose
- Comedian and radio host Ron Bennington, 67, regrets delaying medical care but remains determined to live fully while undergoing chemotherapy and exploring a clinical trial.
- His symptoms escalated into severe pain before he finally sought help; doctors found a “blockage” that further testing revealed as metastatic colon cancer.
- Treatment strategy varies widely in stage 4 cases — as Dr. Daniel Labow notes, “Most patients… want to go right to the operating room,” but he emphasizes that “effective chemotherapy and effective surgery are both important.”
- Many advanced patients rely on long-term therapy rather than surgery; Dr. Paul Oberstein explains that “most… cannot proceed to surgery,” meaning ongoing treatment or clinical trials are key to maintaining quality of life.
“If somebody came in here named Cancer, I’d knock them out,” he told TODAY. “Now, I just try to take my medicine when they tell me to and eat right. That’s it.”
Each case of stage 4 colon cancer presents a unique treatment path. According to Dr. Daniel Labow, Chief of the Surgical Oncology Division at Mount Sinai Health System, patients often feel an urgency to act quickly.
“Most patients, when they come in the door—as I am a surgeon as well as an oncologist—want to go right to the operating room, because they just feel getting it out is a critical thing,” Dr. Labow explains.
WATCH: Treating Metastatic Colon Cancer
But Dr. Labow emphasizes that strategy matters more than speed when treating this advanced disease.
“In actuality, effective chemotherapy and effective surgery are both important for the best possible outcome, and part of the job is to figure out which one we should do first. There are very diverse options,” Dr. Labow said.
For patients like Bennington, treatment decisions depend on how far the cancer has spread. Surgery may be viable if metastases are confined to a single area, but widespread disease often calls for chemotherapy as the primary approach.
While chemotherapy is an effective cancer treatment tactic, it comes with grueling side effects that can range from fatigue, nausea, vomiting, and hair loss, among other side effects.
WATCH: Chemotherapy While Treating Colon Cancer
“The overall view of treating metastatic colon cancer is that most of those patients cannot proceed to surgery, and so their cancer can never be removed entirely,” says Dr. Paul Oberstein, a medical oncologist at NYU Langone’s Perlmutter Cancer Center.
In such cases, patients may live with their cancer while undergoing ongoing therapy or participating in clinical trials aimed at controlling the disease and preserving quality of life.
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@cuecardwally https://t.co/bw8J67ZVq3— Bennington (@BenningtonShow) October 6, 2026
Despite his diagnosis, Bennington refuses to step back from the work that brings him joy and purpose. Even as he undergoes cancer treatment, he’s folding the experience directly into his craft.
His podcast hasn’t slowed down — not even from his hospital room. He recently recorded conversations with actor Michael Che and comedian Jessica Kirson, continuing to deliver the same sharp, thoughtful interviews his audience expects.
During a chat with fellow podcaster Bill Burr, Bennington even joked about the portable chemo device he carries home after treatment.
“You’re here for me getting the chemo ball,” he told Burr.
“This is the portable chemo I leave with, and it treats me for the next two days. It’s a ball. It looks like a hand grenade filled with chemo.”
He also noted that treatment options have expanded in recent years, adding with a wry smile, “This is one of the better times to have cancer, they say, because you get to have a chemo ball.”
Bennington says he is taking a clinical trial drug for his treatment. Clinical trials help doctors better understand cancer and discover more effective treatment methods.
They also give patients a chance to try a treatment before it’s approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which can potentially be life-changing.
WATCH: Clinical trials can be life-saving.
Dr. Beth Karlan is a gynecologic oncologist at UCLA Health. She says the goal of clinical trials is to advance cancer research to a point where the disease becomes akin to diabetes, where it becomes a manageable condition.
“Clinical trials hopefully can benefit you, but are also providing very, very vital information to the whole scientific community about the effectiveness of these treatments,” Dr. Karlan said.
“They can be lifesaving. We’ve seen many in the last few years of children and adults who have participated in trials and have had miraculous results,” Dr. Karlan continued.
Expert Resources for Advanced Colon Cancer Patients
Coping With an Advanced Colon Cancer Diagnosis
“The first-line (initial treatment) chemotherapy for metastatic colon cancer, if they’ve not seen any other chemotherapy before, is the standard FOLFOX,” Dr. Heather Yeo, a colorectal surgeon at Weill Cornell Medicine, explained to SurvivorNet.
“Most colon cancers do respond to FOLFOX. If you respond really well, then we keep you on that until you stop responding really well. But if after a few cycles your disease has progressed, that’s when we think about adding additional chemotherapies,” Dr. Yeo continued.
WATCH: Managing Metastatic Colon Cancer
The cancer starts when abnormal lumps called polyps grow in the colon or rectum. If you don’t have these polyps removed, they can sometimes change into cancer. It takes up to 10 years for a colon polyp to become a full-blown cancer, according to SurvivorNet experts.
“When we see a polyp, we actually physically take the polyp out through the colonoscope,” Dr. Zuri Murrell, a colorectal cancer surgeon and Director of the Cedars-Sinai Colorectal Cancer Center, explained.
WATCH: When to get a colonoscopy
Most colon cancers can be prevented if people are regularly screened. The screening usually involves a colonoscopy, in which a long, thin tube attached to a camera examines the colon and rectum. If no polyps are discovered, the following screening won’t be needed for about ten years.
What Treatment Options Exist for Colon Cancer?
“There are a lot of advances being made in colorectal cancer,” Dr. Yeo previously told SurvivorNet.
Colon cancer treatment is more targeted, meaning doctors often test for specific changes or genetic mutations that cause cancer growth.
Biomarkers are key to tailoring specific treatments. Biomarkers are molecular patterns becoming more commonly used in colon cancer diagnosis, prognosis, and management. According to the National Cancer Institute, a biomarker is “a biological molecule found in blood, other body fluids, or tissues that is a sign of a normal or abnormal process, or a condition or disease,” such as cancer.
“In colon cancer, we’re starting to look more and more at people’s biomarkers, so we’re starting to take the cancers, sequence them, understand where the different mutations are to figure out whether or not someone has a normal gene here or an abnormal gene,” Dr. Yeo explained.
“Those are the areas that people want to be able to target a little bit more. We’re getting close to more of what we would call precision medicine, meaning we can start looking at people’s genetic mutations and think about how they might respond to different drugs.”
There are different types of biomarkers, including DNA, proteins, and genetic mutations found in blood, tumor tissue, or other body fluids. The biomarkers most commonly used in colon cancer management are:
- Genetic mutations within the tumor, such as MMR/MSI, KRAS, BRAF, and HER2
- Bloodstream carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA)
CEA is a protein produced by most tumor cells (but not all) and can be picked up in the bloodstream. High CEA levels do not establish a colon cancer diagnosis. However, higher CEA levels correlate with a worse prognosis and potential metastasis. Carcinoembryonic antigen is important for post-treatment follow-up to ensure the cancer hasn’t returned. Be sure to check with your doctor before treatment starts to ensure a CEA blood sample has been obtained.
More on Treating Colon Cancer
Surgery and chemotherapy are common approaches to colorectal cancer.
Some examples of Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved chemotherapy drug treatments include:
- FOLFOX: leucovorin, 5-FU, and oxaliplatin (Eloxatin)
- FOLFIRI: leucovorin, 5-FU, and irinotecan (Camptosar)
- CAPEOX or CAPOX: capecitabine (Xeloda) and oxaliplatin
- FOLFOXIRI: leucovorin, 5-FU, oxaliplatin, and irinotecan
- Trifluridine and tipiracil (Lonsurf)
WATCH: Understanding Your Options with Metastatic Colon Cancer
Among metastatic colon cancer patients, multiple treatment options exist, including surgical and non-surgical options.
One treatment option includes an oral treatment called Fruquintinib, which is a targeted therapy for adults who have metastatic colorectal cancer and have tried other treatments. Results from a trial published last year showed the drug improved overall survival and progression-free survival, which measures the amount of time before the cancer returns or spreads. It works by blocking the growth of blood vessels, which increases tumor growth.
Once you get to the metastatic setting, many patients “just run out of options,” Jennifer Elliott, head of solid tumors at Takeda, explained to SurvivorNet at the ASCO Annual Meeting. So it was critically important for Takeda to do this deal to in-license fruquintinib. We hope to give patients another option.”
Fruquintinib has been approved in China since 2018 and was originally developed by the Chinese biopharmaceutical company HUTCHMED. Takeda Oncology acquired the exclusive worldwide license for the drug outside of mainland China, Hong Kong, and Macau in January 2023.
More on Colon Cancer
Colon cancer is very treatable and curable if caught early. Colon cancer screenings can involve at-home tests such as Cologuard, but a colonoscopy is more effective, according to SurvivorNet experts.
The cancer starts when abnormal lumps called polyps grow in the colon or rectum. It takes up to 10 years for a colon polyp to become full-blown cancer, according to SurvivorNet experts.
The American Gastrointestinal Association lowered the recommended initial age for colorectal screening from 50 to 45. However, experts recommend screening earlier for some people who may be at an increased risk of developing colon cancer, such as those with a family history of the disease.
WATCH: Debunking misconceptions about colon cancer.
The most poignant signature of colon cancer includes a change in bowel habits. This may include constipation or diarrhea due to changes in the size or shape of bowel movements. A change in stool color, particularly black or tarry stools, can indicate bleeding from a tumor that lies deep in the colon.
Other symptoms can be harder to pinpoint, such as abdominal pain and unintentional weight loss. Finally, some tumors bleed a small amount over a long period of time, resulting in anemia (low red blood cell count) that is picked up on blood work.
Questions to Ask Your Doctor
If you are facing a colon cancer diagnosis, here are some questions you may ask your doctor.
- What are my treatment options based on my diagnosis?
- If I’m worried about managing the costs of cancer care, who can help me?
- What support services are available to me? To my family?
- Could this treatment affect my sex life? If so, how and for how long?
- What are the risks and possible side effects of treatment?
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