30 November 2023 , 23:01
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A TV journalist has recounted how she was shocked to find she had a rare life-threatening cancer after ignoring the warning signs.
Antonia Hylton, 30, was used to waking up feeling a bit rough as she spent much of her working life travelling but it took watching another correspondent's tale about how he lost his brother due to colon cancer and also watching a TikTok video of a woman diagnosed with the condition aged just 24 to take her symptoms seriously.
Hylton, an NBC News journalist, said she saw a segment on the TODAY show in which Craig Melvin retold the story of his brother's death due to colon cancer. She said: "Something about that really stuck with me."
In an interview later with Melvin, she said it was, "easy for me to just write it off." Antonia said she'd tell herself, "I travel, I'm on planes (and) maybe I don't have the best diet. But I love what I do, so it's worth it and I'm not going to let these symptoms hold me back."
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Antonia Hylton ignored the symptoms of her disease (Rob Latour/AFI/REX/Shutterstock)After seeing those stories, she found that her symptoms were getting worse and she said: "I was waking up (and) my face was swollen. I was having trouble going to the bathroom for days on end." Knowing that Black people have the highest rate of colon cancer in the US and that she has a family history of the disease, Hylton said: "I went to see a specialist who sent me for a colonoscopy."
And on her 30th birthday, after returning from a work trip three weeks after her screening she found a number of messages from her doctor. Medics had discovered a polyp, which was found to be a neuroendocrine tumor, which is a rare type of cancer that releases hormones into the bloodstream and Hylton said: "I was panicking."
According to Dr Nooshin Hosseini, a gastroenterologist and Hylton's doctor, neuroendocrine tumors are rare. He explained that while the tumors can occur anywhere in the body, they most commonly develop in the gastrointestinal tract, specifically the small intestine.
The symptoms depend on where in the body the tumor is, Hosseini said. Neuroendocrine tumors that are found in the colon or rectum tend to have symptoms similar to those of colon cancer, and these include, blood in the stool, a change in bowel habits, unexplained weight loss, abdominal pain and fatigue.
Hylton, however, was lucky because her doctor was able to give her an early diagnosis and she then had a series of surgeries to remove tissue as well as screening tests to see if the cancer had spread. Doctors were then able to give her the all-clear.
But she added: "I learned a really important lesson at 30 to listen to myself and to put myself first. I love my job. I worked hard here at NBC, and I'm not going to stop doing that. But I've learned the lesson that I really need to put my health first and not push these things off."