Mother Diagnosed with Stage 4 Colon Cancer After Doctors Mistook Symptoms During Pregnancy (Exclusive)

When Georgia mother Jenna Scott was in the final stretch of carrying her son, she began to experience severe abdominal pain, nausea and even rectal bleeding, but her doctor chalked it up to pregnancy.

After her son Cameron turned 1 and she was still struggling with similar symptoms, doctors tried switching her birth control, but nothing seemed to fix the underlying issues. A primary care physician eventually referred her to a gastroenterologist, who recommended a colonoscopy. 

“I woke up from the table and he said, ‘I don’t need to send your results off to pathology to know that you have cancer.’ And that was the day life changed,” Scott tells PEOPLE.

Doctors diagnosed Scott with stage 4 colon cancer in 2017, when she was 31 years old.

“I think I went into a state of shock and disbelief, because there’s no one else in my family that has cancer and that word did not belong in my vocabulary,” Scott, now 39, says. “It wasn’t a part of my world.”

Before her diagnosis, Scott had been a competitive cheerleader and gymnast until she graduated from college, after which she remained dedicated to fitness.

She and her husband Derrick tried to devise plans to prioritize their son and prolong her life expectancy, but it didn’t come easily. He also launched a GoFundMe that raised thousands of dollars in a matter of days. 

“In the beginning, my husband would take the news a lot harder than I did, because he heard it as reality, and I heard it and went into shock,” Scott says. 

Prior to her illness, Scott worked as an implementation consultant at a bank, a high-stress but fulfilling role. To alleviate pressure after the diagnosis, her boss needed to reassign some of her larger projects. 

“That was like a blow to my confidence, for what I had built at work and I really did understand, but I couldn’t help the way I felt about it,” Scott says. 

She had to go on leave for about a year, during which time her coworkers sent videos to offer support, including one to mark the Colorectal Cancer Alliance’s Dress in Blue Day. 

“It was just amazing, the support that they gave me, and I’ll never forget, but [cancer] caused me to have to eventually quit, because I just wasn’t the same while I was going through the treatment, my mind wasn’t the same. I couldn’t retain numbers as well,” Scott says.

Then, in February 2020, doctors found a pre-cancerous melanoma on her foot and eventually she had to face treatment days alone as the pandemic raged nationwide.

“I just feel like I went into a state of real loneliness because the pandemic, number one, you’re already isolated. And then number two, having to undergo a procedure where you’re getting needles shot in your foot,” Scott recalls. “I didn’t have anyone there to be able to keep me calm or tell me it’s okay. And I just remember every time I would get picked up by my mom or my husband, I would just be in tears.”

Since being diagnosed, Scott has faced multiple surgeries and is eight years into an ongoing chemotherapy and targeted therapy treatment plan while raising her son. 

“I take time to cry a lot, if I’m being honest,” Scott says. “I have to manage when I can be vulnerable, because I still want my son to know that I’m strong and I’m going to be okay, and I really don’t like for him to see me going through so much, because it’s affecting him.” 

In 2020, she started a new job at the Black Innovation Alliance, a company that supports entrepreneurs, climbing the ranks to become Chief Operating Officer and working around her treatment schedule. 

Scott’s son continues to be a source of strength, in addition to her husband, parents, relatives and friends. 

“I want to see him have a family of his own, that’s the reason that I just continue to fight every day, because it doesn’t get easier,” she says. “If anything, it gets harder and harder to deal with. And my doctor said it’s because chemotherapy is cumulative.”

Over the years, she’s also learned to be open with those around her.

“I’ve gotten to the point where I tell people the truth about how I’m feeling. If I’m having a hard time, I just let them know that,” Scott says.

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Scott says her hair has fallen out completely three times in the past eight years and she loses her eyelashes every few months before they grow back. She’s also developed a rigorous skincare routine because her treatments leave her with chemotherapy rash.

“It’s one thing to deal with things on the inside, but it’s another thing that affects your mental [health] when the world can see what you’re dealing with on the outside,” Scott says. 

While managing the physical toll of cancer, Scott hopes others dealing with similar experiences try to maintain some degree of normalcy in their lives. 

“I would say that it’s a real mental game at the end of the day and life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you respond to it,” Scott says. “So as long as you keep your positivity and try to keep norms in your life and don’t shut yourself off to the people who want to support you and the things that you enjoy in life.”

“Take it one day at a time, or one hour at a time, whatever the day has brought you,” she says.