Cancer incidence rising among adults under 50, new report says, leaving doctors searching for answers

Cancer patients are “increasingly shifting from older to middle-aged individuals,” according to a report released Wednesday by the American Cancer Society.

Josh Herting was on a business trip in Vermont when he received a phone call from his doctor that would change his life. On that cold winter day — a decade ago this week — his doctor told him that he had colon cancer. After hanging up the phone, Herting wanted to keep working. “I was very focused on work, and I was like, ‘I’ve got to finish this work trip, and then I’ll be home,’ ” he said. “I didn’t understand the seriousness of it.” But moments later, he picked up the phone again and called his girlfriend, Amber. When he told her the news, she said it was time to come home. Herting drove five hours to Boston. He arrived home at 2 o’clock in the morning and had medical appointments beginning six hours later. “I was 34 years old, in what I would consider incredible health. I worked out five to six days a week, very low body fat, ate really healthy, and was in no pain or anything, but I noticed some clotted blood in my stool on a few different occasions,” said Herting, who is now 44 and married to Amber. He added that his father was diagnosed with stage I colon cancer in his early 50s but said he had no other known family history of the disease.