“I was healthy. I felt fine. It was a total surprise to me. I had blood in my stool,” she said at a recent Kiwanis meeting. “I let it go. Maybe I ripped something.”
Her husband was and is still her best supporter. He urged her to go to the doctor, but she did more than that. First, she got online and found more information than she wanted to know.
She tried to do the right thing and saw her physician, Tod Stillson. He knew something was wrong.
The CAT scan didn’t show it, but he thought she should see a surgeon. A local surgeon said it was probably just a polyp and she was set up for surgery, told they couldn’t remove it and had to schedule a biopsy.
“So what does this mean?” she asked. “It’s cancer.” That day, April 9, 2009, her life changed.
She wanted another opinion and they headed to the University of Chicago. She heard “Stage 1” and “Stage 3.” It didn’t matter. It was still cancer and she had the surgery — and a colostomy.
“That was the roughest month of my life, starting with thinking I had a tear or a hemorrhoid to ‘You have rectal cancer and need a permanent colostomy.’ All I could think was that I was too young for this and my kids need their mommy.”
Now, she has a permanent colostomy, but she deals with it. “If I could choose to do without it, I would,” she said.
Stage 3 involves chemo and radiation and she’s finished — just two weeks ago. “That pretty much sucked,” she chuckled. She never loses her sense of humor. “I lost a lot of weight. Gained it all back,” she laughed.
She uses her experience as a positive, encouraging young woman to get a rectal exam when they’re at their gynecologist. Her type of cancer usually strikes 90 percent of  patients older than 50. She was an exception.
Today, Carol is clear of cancer and doing everything she can to keep her young children, Taylor, 9, and Jordan, 6,  as well as other young women safe. 
Other survivors in her Relay for Life group lauded her strength and what she’s doing for others.
Linda Rippy, who was responsible — with others — starting Relay for Life in Marshall County, is a breast cancer survivor. Her son, Thad, was diagnosed with cancer and was in the same hospital with Carol.
“Carol was a huge support for Thad,” she said. “Carol and my son were doing this together and had surgery within a week of one another in the same hospital. She was a support for him. She was a strong, strong girl for him. The fact that she could talk to him and get him through it, I have to commend her. If it hadn’t been for Carol with some of the things she was talking about, I think Thad would have cancelled his surgery.”
Denny Beville, too, commended Carol for her bravery. Both he and his wife, Francine, are survivors and laud the research that is being done.       
“We do have to talk and tell people there is a cure. Research is working,” he said.
Carol speaks everywhere she can to get the word out; she’s speaking at Crossroads Health Occupation Classes for young women.
“I had it a lot longer than I cared to know,” she said.
She’s done with drugs and is getting back into her regular routine. She tried running again, but could barely finish a mile. Thursday, she spent the day at Plymouth Country Club at a putting contest at PCC sponsored by her employer, Lake City Bank. She’s on the mend.
The Kiwanis team “Kiwanis for Kids and a Cure” has been renamed to envelope her co-workers at Lake City Bank, family and friends. It’s now “Kiwanis Club Family.” She’s been supported by Kiwanis, held bake sales at the bank and thanks to Young’s TV & Appliance, has an upright freezer donated to raise more money for research. She’s truly a poster child for the event.
“I will fight it every step of the way. It will never take me laying down. I hope someday my story can help another young mom deal with the worst news of her life,”  she said.