Katie Rich couldn’t shake the peculiar soreness in her abdomen.<\/p>\n
The New York-based teacher, 33 at the time, had just given birth to her third child months earlier via cesarean section, but that nagging pain in her ribs was new – and it had not happened with any of her other pregnancies.<\/p>\n
‘But it didn’t hurt enough to do anything about it,’ Rich, now a 47-year-old educational administrator, told the Daily Mail.<\/p>\n
That was in 2018, and when she mentioned the pain at a regular OBGYN visit, it was chalked up to be an issue with her gallbladder, which sits just below the liver and helps store bile to digest fat. Rich’s brother and mother had both had their gallbladders removed, so she assumed it was her turn and booked an appointment with her primary care physician.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Five minutes after performing a sonogram of Rich’s abdomen, doctors called her with news that her gallbladder was fine, but there was a ‘shadow’ showing up on her liver.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Rich claims the doctor said, ‘You know what? You’re 33 years old. Don’t worry about it.’ Still, he ordered an MRI scan to be safe, which came back inconclusive. A biopsy a few days later, however, revealed a devastating diagnosis: Stage 4 colorectal cancer<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n Despite having no symptoms other than the pain around her ribs, Rich’s cancer was severe enough to have spread from one tumor in her colon to several that covered about 70 percent of her liver.\u00a0<\/p>\n At the time, her youngest son was only eight weeks old, she was looking at a survival rate of just 13 percent.<\/p>\n Katie Rich (pictured at right with her husband and four children) was diagnosed with Stage 4 colon cancer in 2012 after suffering just one symptom: abdominal pain<\/p>\n<\/div>\n![\"Katie](\"https:\/\/i.dailymail.co.uk\/1s\/2026\/03\/25\/19\/107416249-15662807-image-a-18_1774467385090.jpg\")
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