Molly McMaster Morgoslepov is a cancer survivor and an advocate for early cancer screenings.
Recently, I had the chance to interview Molly McMaster Morgoslepov. Molly is the daughter of long-time Hulett residents, Jim and Trudy McMaster, and spends time in Huletts throughout the year.
Molly is a cancer survivor and a cancer screening advocate. She shares her courageous personal journey below.
To begin, Molly, could you tell us “your story?”
I was going to school at Colorado State University, playing a lot of hockey and just enjoying how great it is out there, but also had some “stomach issues.” I remember the first time it was really obvious, I had really bad stomach pains and went to the bathroom only to find bright red blood in the toilet – a lot of it. I called my new doctor immediately and told the nurse over the phone. She told me it could be one of a few different things (none of which was cancer), and we scheduled an appointment for the following morning. When I got up the next morning and the pain and blood were both gone, I called to cancel my appointment, rationalizing that I didn’t want anyone “poking around back there.”
As the months went on, the pain was on and off and steadily getting worse. Funny thing about that was, as the pain became greater, so did my tolerance for it. My appetite started to go too, to the point that I had to force myself to eat, and finally the vomiting started. It had gotten so bad that anything I ate, I would throw back up, so I started drinking 1 milkshake a day, knowing I needed the calories, since I was still playing hockey.
Finally, I was fired from my job for calling in sick so much (I could hardly walk some days, let alone coach ice hockey and drive a Zamboni), and didn’t know what to do. I packed up my things (literally carrying one box to the car and then going back into the house to lay down for a while before taking the next box) and left Colorado to go back to my family in New York and hopefully find the root of my problem.
It took me four days to drive home by myself. A drive that I had dome by myself in 32 hours took days. I drove an hour and then napped for an hour. Drove two and napped for two. On the ride home, I remember eating only half a twinkie or something like that, and drinking only water and Gatorade.
I arrived home on a Thursday night. Mom made me a half a cup of soup and I ate half of that before collapsing into bed. From there, I threw up every hour until morning when Mom and Dad helped me to the car and took me to see a nurse practitioner. She gave me X-Rays and immediately sent me to the emergency room where I was diagnosed with having a total blockage in my large intestine and told that I would need emergency surgery.
Surgery was the next morning, and my doctor removed 25 inches of my large intestine along with a tumor the size of his two fists. I began recovering in my hospital bed, all the while thinking that everything was fine, until he came into my room early on February 19th, 1999 – my 23rd birthday. He used all sorts of big doctor words and I didn’t understand him. He finally said, “Molly, you have colon cancer.” My world stopped. All I could think about was the fact that I would die. I would lose my hair and have to go through chemotherapy. I didn’t want anyone to feel sorry for poor little Molly with cancer – didn’t want that life – so instead I started thinking of ways to kill myself. All the while, I watched my doctor’s lips move and had no idea what he was saying.
I think what scares most people is that colon cancer is a “silent killer,” most people don’t know they have it until it’s too late. How does our society combat this?
Colorectal cancer is the number two cancer killer in the country, but yet one of the only ones you can actually test for and remove before it starts, just by getting screened and having polyps removed. (Polyps are what turn into cancer.) Many people are afraid of the screening and the first step to getting them to do that is to get them to overcome the fear of talking about it. That’s why I started coming up with what I like to call “crazy things.” People may see the Colossal Colon at the mall and say it’s completely disgusting and not come near it, but those people don’t even realize that even if they won’t come in and talk about it, you know they’re going back to their dinner table that night and are saying, “Guess what I saw at the mall today.” The conversation has at least started.
I’ve heard people say that getting a colonoscopy is easier than going to the dentist. (My apologies to dentists.) Would you agree?
Getting a colonoscopy is probably easier than going to the dentist. The doctor will give you a conscious sedation (which means you will be awake but won’t feel much and won’t remember a thing!) and you may think you’ve just had the best nap ever! The worst part of having a colonoscopy is definitely the prep, which is usually started the night before and cleans out your intestines for the doctor to be able to see the inside clearly. The prep isn’t the best tasting, but it’s improved upon every year, and I promise that a diagnosis of colorectal cancer is much worse.
How did Coco, the giant colon, come about?
During the summer of 2000, I inline skated from New York to Colorado in a journey dubbed Rolling to Recovery, all to raise awareness of a disease I was told that I was too young to have. Just before I left, I got an e-mail from a young woman in Little Rock, AR named Amanda Sherwood-Roberts. She was a year older than I was and had been diagnosed with stage III colon cancer at the age of 24, right around the same time that I was. We became instant friends, almost sisters, and bonded not by talking about our disease, but just because we had both gone through similar things at a young age.
After e-mailing with Amanda for a year and a half, I got an e-mail from her cousin who told me that Amanda wasn’t doing well and wasn’t expected to live more than three months. She asked if I would come to Little Rock to meet her in person, which I did. The following week, Amanda and I were on the Today show together to tell our stories (Amanda via satellite from her couch, and I from the studio), and at the end of the interview, Katie Couric spoke with me and told me that if I could come up with anything crazy for National Colorectal Cancer Awareness Month (March), she would have me back on the show. My wheels began to turn.
Amanda lost her battle with colon cancer in January of 2002. I was angry and I was sad. I also felt guilty for surviving when she had not, but most of all I was inspired. I wanted to do something in her memory to save other people from going through what we went through. It had to be big and it had to be funny, since that was the best way to get people to talk about their colons and thus get them screened. Then one morning, it came to me. I wanted to build a giant colon filled with all sorts of yucky but educational things, in order to get people talking about the disease that no one wants to talk about. By some miracle, Amanda’s cousin and I raised all the money we needed and CoCo the Colossal Colon debuted in March of 2003 with an appearance on the Today show. Then we took her on a national tour in 2003, going to 20 major cities all over the country.
What exactly is the Colondar?
While on a national tour with the Colossal Colon in 2003, I met a young woman in Philadelphia who had been diagnosed at 22 with stage IV colon cancer. We clicked right away and started talking about the crazy-ways we could raise awareness. She said, “We should do a calendar showing our surgical scars,” and the Colondar was born. The Colon Club is going into its 10th year producing it this calendar of young people all diagnosed under the stereotypical age of 50. It’s an awesome educational tool and we find that people sit down and read it cover to cover, learning about colorectal cancer, signs and symptoms, different treatments, different aspects of the disease like fertility, etc. Since the beginning, we have shot the photos at my parents’ home in Hulett’s Landing, NY and have turned it into somewhat of a survivor retreat in the process. It’s incredible when we are able to get these young people together who have never met anyone else like them. It’s like finding a family you never knew you had.
Have you seen these educational efforts transform lives?
I have been lucky enough to see our efforts transform lives on a larger scale and smaller. I was diagnosed 13 years ago at a time when the internet was still fairly new to the main stream. It was hard to come up with any information and education on colon cancer was few and far between. Today, you can actually talk about a colonoscopy and people know what it is. People are less and less afraid to talk about it and colorectal cancer rates are finally on the decline. That’s proof.
On the smaller scale, I’ve heard so many stories about people who have seen the Colossal Colon or read through the Colondar and had a light bulb go off in their heads to get screened. One story that always stands out to me is this. In 2006, I was lucky enough to get the opportunity to play ice hockey with all 14 teams in the United Hockey League, a men’s professional hockey league. It gave us the opportunity to bring colons to a place where colons don’t belong! We had 80,000 hockey cards printed out with my colondar photo on them (a red bikini and pigtails, modeled after Wayne Gretzy’s wife’s photo shoot in Sports illustrated about ten years earlier) in hopes that more people would take them home. On the back of the card we printed my colon cancer stats, instead of my hockey stats.
About a year after the UHL Cross-Checks colon cancer took place, I got a phone call from one of my coaches from the Empire State Games. He proceeded to tell me that he had kept my hockey card on the dashboard of his car and when he started having symptoms, he knew to go to his doctor. When he asked his doctor about getting a colonoscopy, the doctor told him not to worry and that he was too young to have colon cancer. My coach then told him my story and convinced his doctor to get him a colonoscopy. Coach had 30+ polyps removed from his colon.
How is your personal journey progressing today?
In February, I will celebrate 13 years cancer free! I have two young boys, Kyril and Maks, and am happily married and living just outside of Saratoga Springs, NY. I’ve recently taken a new direction, accepting the position of Group Health & Wellness Director at the Wilton Branch of the Saratoga Regional YMCA and I couldn’t be happier. It’s taken me a long time for cancer to not be at the front of my mind every day, but I feel lucky to have finally gotten to a place where it truly isn’t. Never thought I would reach that milestone.
I am still on the Board of Directors for The Colon Club, but am excited for a new opportunity that has also come up through the Y. We have recently gotten a grant to start LIVESTRONG at the YMCA, which is a program that will allow me to physically work with cancer survivors in getting their strength and mobility back. It’s very exciting!
Molly, I can’t thank you enough for taking this time to educate the readers of the Huletts Current. Any final thoughts?
Thank you so much for letting me talk about colons and for putting it out there! Talking about it is the first step to getting people screened, so thank YOU for all of this!