While training for the 2023 Cleveland Marathon, John B. Johnson began noticing blood in his stool.
“I thought I was just training too hard and it was ruptured hemorrhoids or something,” Johnson told Verywell.
Johnson underwent a colonoscopy two weeks after running the marathon. Right after the procedure, the doctor told John that he may have a cancerous mass in his rectum. A biopsy confirmed this suspicion, and at age 35, Johnson was diagnosed with stage 2 colorectal cancer.
“I was really mad that this was happening to me. For about two weeks, I thought, ‘I eat healthy. I’m a vegetarian. I work out. I’ve done everything I could to avoid this in a way, and then I still got cancer,’” Johnson said.
