A 39-year-old man had blood in his poop. He had colon cancer.

Russ Read-Barrow was 39 when he first noticed blood in his poop. Russ Read-Barrow Russ Read-Barrow was 39 when he noticed blood in his poop. A colonoscopy confirmed that he had colon cancer. He's among a growing number of younger people being diagnosed with colon cancer, and living with it long-term. After he saw blood in the toilet bowl maybe half a dozen times over the course of a few weeks, Russ Read-Barrow visited the doctor. He didn't have any other symptoms, but something felt off, he told Business Insider. "I was like, 'Oh, this doesn't seem right,'" he said. Read-Barrow was 39 at the time, and a busy dad of two. He regularly traveled to London for his job in PR, which involved a lot of socializing and a fair amount of drinking, but overall his lifestyle was healthy, he said.