I was diagnosed with colorectal cancer at 35 years old on July 20, 2025. This happened to be on my one-year wedding anniversary. I had launched a startup earlier that year, starting to plan to grow our family, and caring for my mother who was battling ovarian cancer. Life has a way of throwing you curveballs, and cancer was definitely not on my bingo card.

I was objectively healthy! Why me? Well, there’s a lot more to it than meets the eye. I was denied a screening test 2 years prior to diagnosis. I was ‘too young’. My father had colon cancer at 50 years old, so for me, I was told at 40 I could start. I wish I didn’t accept that as an answer… I regret that a lot.

For 2-3 months, I had blood in my stool and growing fatigue while playing sports. I thought it was father time catching up with me. I recall telling a friend after a squash match ‘Imagine if I had cancer’. Somehow, instinctively I knew something wasn’t right.

So, I pushed for answers. Even though I was questioned, I fought for a fecal immunochemical test (FIT) and it came back positive. While it wasn’t easy to get this test done, it gave me clarity that I needed a colonoscopy asap. Once I got one, the GI found a large cancerous tumour almost fully blocking my large intestine, and a small scope could not pass it. My wife and I cried together that evening on our first wedding anniversary. The next morning, we got to work.

Everything changed! Diet, various medical appointments, hours of research, cancer modules. I was making radical changes to what I ate and how I lived to prepare for the greatest battle of my life.

A few weeks later, surgeons removed my whole large intestine and it was tough, initially I couldn’t walk, eat, drink or sleep. The nausea was uncontrollable, and at one point an NG tube was put through my nose into my stomach to drain 3.5 litres of bile. I was wearing diapers, needed help for the smallest things, I’ve never felt so dependent.

After 8 days in hospital, I got home, time to recover best I could before finding out my official diagnosis of stage 3b….which meant chemotherapy. I had lost 47 pounds and I didn’t feel ready, but onwards we go. Trying to resume some normalcy with family, work, and just living, until the week that almost broke me. 

My mom died from ovarian cancer on November 1, 2025. She was my MVP. I had never told her about my cancer. She noticed my weight loss and asked if I was okay, I still wonder what her motherly instincts knew. Two days after she passed away, I played basketball to clear my head and tore my ACL, and about 30 hours later a bowel obstruction put me back in emergency surgery. I got let out of the hospital early to attend her funeral bandaged, on crutches and close to passing out, mourning the person who gave me life while fighting for my own. Physically, emotionally and mentally tapped.

My aggressive chemotherapy plan resumed, and every round hit harder. The constant nausea, cold felt like an electric shock, and every stomach pain brought the fear of another obstruction. I kept working because work gave me somewhere to put my mind. It gave me an opportunity to share my story in the moment, and build something so others could avoid the path I was currently on. It gave me an opportunity to turn my pain into purpose. Sometimes, working was an anchor and sometimes it was a hiding place. Chemo stripped away the illusion of control, but while I could not choose how my body responded, I could choose my attitude and my next step. That did not mean pretending I was fine, it meant fear did not get to run the whole day. I could WIN that day!

Finishing treatment was an incredible moment, but it did not feel like a finish line. I was left asking, what comes next? Was I expected to be normal again? This was harder mentally than I expected, and it had me questioning what I wanted from the life I had fought to keep. Cancer has changed my identity and perspective so I could not simply return to the old version of myself, many ways for the better!

Just over a year after diagnosis, my scans show no evidence of disease. I ran my first 10K and returned to working full-time, running a startup and getting stronger in the gym. I still live with digestive changes, neuropathy, surveillance and the fear of recurrence. Treatment may be over, but the cancer journey is not. Looking healthy and feeling safe are not the same. Recovery is small wins stacked on ugly days.

I do not always feel inspirational. Most of the time, I feel like someone who was dragged through something awful and is trying to make something useful from it. If my story makes others stop ignoring blood in their stool, diet or lifestyle health changes, it’s all worth it!

That purpose also shaped TopazFIT, an at-home FIT we launched through Topaz Diagnostics to make screening easier to access. I co-founded Topaz before my diagnosis, but cancer made this work deeply personal. A FIT does not diagnose cancer, and anyone with symptoms still needs medical care. But a FIT set in motion the chain of events that likely saved my life. I know what can happen when a barrier is removed and someone acts sooner, especially before their symptoms become impossible to ignore. I wish I took a FIT test 3 years ago.

I understand toughness differently now. It is not constant intensity or acting unbreakable (that sent me to the ER multiple times, hah!), it’s being intentional in choosing your attitude and taking the next best step. I could not choose cancer, losing my colon or losing my mom. I could choose my response. Some days winning meant changing a life. Some days it meant getting out of bed. Both count. I am living proof that tough times don’t last, tough people do.

If you take anything away from my story, make it these three things:

* Learn your family history, ask again about how to get screened, and advocate for yourself. Do not wait for symptoms.

* Preventative health is wealth. Start changing your diet, your environment and your stressors now.

* How you start is not how you finish. What you are dealing with now can turn into a gift, you just don’t know it yet.

Health surpasses everything.

Zed Dhalla in Vancouver, Canada / October 2026