Host
Heather Simonsen, MA
Associate Director, Public Affairs
Huntsman Cancer Institute
Neli Ulrich, PhD, MS
Executive Director, Comprehensive Cancer Center
Chief Scientific Officer, Huntsman Cancer Institute
Jon M. and Karen Huntsman Presidential Professor of Population Health Sciences at the University of Utah
Greg and Jasmine Barton
Early Onset Colorectal Cancer Patient and His Wife, Jasmine
Episode Transcript
A Noticeable and Worrying Trend (00:39)
Heather Simonsen: You're listening to Delivering a Cancer-Free Frontier podcast.
Assorted Voices: To create and provide better treatments today.
Assorted Voices: I feel like the future is very bright, and I can't even imagine what cancer care is going to look like over the next 50 years. To continue that journey to eradicate cancer from the face of the earth.
Heather Simonsen: Hello, and welcome to Delivering a Cancer-Free Frontier. I'm your host Heather Simonsen.
Greg Barton, Instagram Recording: All right, a quick update for what's going on with me, and blogging doesn't come naturally to me, so apologies.
Heather Simonsen: This is an Instagram video posted by 31-year-old Greg Barton. He is, in his own words—
Greg Barton: —kind of the stereotypical Utah person. I ski, I rock climb, I fly fish, I ice climb, kind of a little bit of all of it. My mom, growing up, was definitely not happy with all the dangerous activities I do.
Heather Simonsen: In September 2025, he received news that interrupted his adventurous life. He learned he had cancer.
Greg Barton: Stage 4c colon cancer. It’s, I guess standard colon cancer, adenocarcinoma I believe, is what it's called.
Heather Simonsen: Greg made the Instagram post about five months after his diagnosis. He wanted to keep his loved ones up to date on his cancer.
Greg Barton: I was getting so many text messages and having to kind of explain the same story to a lot of people was really overwhelming, especially when you're dealing with active cancer treatment.
Heather Simonsen: He told them he was engaged to his girlfriend, Jasmine.
Greg Barton, Instagram Recording: Jasmine's said yes to getting married last week. It's something we've been talking about for months. That she basically said she was with me all the way.
Heather Simonsen: And he talked about what he expected for the future.
Greg Barton, Instagram Recording: I've kind of been back and forth on how to announce this or how to talk about it, just because it's kind of awkward. Makes me uncomfortable. I don't I don't like making people feel sad or uncomfortable. Like it's just it's just such a hard thing to wrap my head around. So, I wanted to let everyone know, kind of my prognosis, what this is going to look like, etc. So, it's hard to say that this is this is treatable, and that we're doing everything we can to treat it. But it's not a curable cancer. It is terminal.
Greg Barton: One of the biggest things for me, actually, why I did that video was I was having a really hard time that with the stage four diagnosis. And I’m young and look so healthy. I felt like a lot of people were minimizing it, which is kind of a tough thing to deal with when you're young. A lot of people are like, "Oh, you're fine. You're gonna beat this. You're like one of the healthiest people I know.” And it felt really, I felt really minimized, and it felt really unfair.
Greg Barton, Instagram Recording: Moral of the story is there's, like, sites you can metastasize to. It's like peritoneum, lungs, liver, lymph nodes, brain, bones. I think that I'm missing one, but anyway, it's not in my brain. It's not in my bones yet. But it's a lot in other places. So, and that's awful, and it sucks.
Greg Barton: And so having tons of people in my life kind of just maybe trivialize it a little bit because we all, with cancer, are usually pretty hopeful. And we want to say, you know, you're going to beat this, and you got this. But yeah, making the Instagram post that I made was really helpful, and I think explaining the seriousness of my diagnosis, which in turn got me a lot of support from my community.
Heather Simonsen: Greg is part of a generation of young people who are being diagnosed with early onset colorectal cancer, defined as anyone diagnosed with the disease under the age of 50. When he talks about his cancer, Greg says he feels like he's raising awareness.
Greg Barton: The American Cancer Society came out and said it's now the number one killer of young people, both men and women. And so, I think, I guess I got cancer before it was cool. But spreading that, spreading that fact, and letting young people around me know that, you know, this is a pretty serious thing to be aware of.
Heather Simonsen: According to the American Cancer Society colorectal cancer incidence between the ages of 20 to 49 is rising by 3% per year. It's a noticeable and worrying trend, one that's made headlines.
Archival News: Colorectal cancer increasing in people in their 30s, their 40s. We don't know why.
Archival News: It's the second leading cause of cancer-related deaths in the country, and it's on the rise in young adults.
Archival News: In 1995, 11% of those diagnosed with colon cancer were 55 and younger. By 2019, it was 20%.
Heather Simonsen: And risen in public consciousness thanks to high-profile celebrities.
Archival News: Actor Chadwick Boseman passing away after a very private battle with colon cancer.
Archival News: Today we remember Dawson's Creek star James Vanderbeek, who passed away on Wednesday at just 48 years old, dying after a fight with colorectal cancer.
Heather Simonsen: And thanks to young people like Greg who are openly sharing their stories on social media and in the news. On today's episode, we're exploring the rise of early onset colorectal cancer. We'll delve into the statistics, discuss the research we're doing here at Huntsman Cancer Institute, and wrestle with the question everyone wants an answer to: Why is this happening? How does an early diagnosis affect these young patients? And what does survivorship look like for them? What is the mental impact?
Greg Barton, Instagram Recording: Yeah, life's precious. It's finite for all of us. I didn't know how finite it was going to be for me, but YOLO and all that stuff that the millennials say. So, anyway, thanks everyone.
Behind the Numbers (06:21)
Heather Simonsen: We're going to come back to Greg and his story in just a bit. First, we wanted to hear more about what's going on behind these troubling statistics. I sat down with one of our leading researchers.
Neli Ulrich: My name is Neli Ulrich.
Heather Simonsen: Dr. Ulrich is the chief scientific officer at Huntsman Cancer Institute and executive director of the Cancer Center.
Neli Ulrich: Which means I'm overseeing all the research activities at Huntsman Cancer Institute, and I'm also a presidential professor of population health sciences at the University of Utah.
Heather Simonsen: She's an epidemiologist, so she studies—
Neli Ulrich: The causes of diseases that could be the causes of cancer, or it could be also the causes of cancer survival or improvements that could be made to cancer survival in the space of cancer survivorship.
Heather Simonsen: She's been researching colon cancer for decades. At Huntsman Cancer Institute, she oversees the ColoCare study, an international project that's exploring how best to treat the disease and learn what future patients can do to improve their health. I ask her to break down the numbers of what we're seeing in young adults and colorectal cancer.
Neli Ulrich: Well, first of all, overall, we're doing a really, really good job with colorectal cancer in the United States. The rates are declining in older adults or average onset adults, but they're rising quite rapidly in adults under the age of 50. So, there has been an increase of nearly 15% among adults age 40 through 49 since 2000 until 2016, and we expect that by 2030, early onset colorectal cancer cases are projected to double in younger adults. So today, one in five colorectal cancer cases occurs in people under the age of 54.
Heather Simonsen: I mean, it is troubling, right? And you see the headlines all over. It's a big topic in the news. What is the average age of diagnosis for colon cancer?
Neli Ulrich: Typically, it's over the age of 60, and I should just also mention how critical it is to have a colonoscopy or colorectal cancer screening, something that has shown to be really, really successful in the area of colorectal cancer screening. If you have a colonoscopy, it also gives you the opportunity, or the physician, the opportunity, to remove any precursors of the colon cancer, which we call polyps, and so that halves your risk of colon cancer in the future.
However, for younger adults, colon cancer screening is typically not recommended. It starts now at age 45, and it would also not be appropriate to screen all younger adults for colorectal cancer. So, we see, unfortunately, many times that when a colorectal cancer occurs at a younger age, that it's due to symptoms that are followed up clinically, and that often means it's at a later stage of diagnosis, a stage three or stage four, which means it already has spread.
Heather Simonsen: So, when did this trend of young people getting colon cancer really become noticeable?
Neli Ulrich: We have a system in the United States, to measure all the incidence of all the cancers across the nation. It's funded by the National Cancer Institute, the SEER registries. One of them is here in Utah, and it was about 10 years ago when this trend became more apparent, and once people started to look at the data. They realize that it's like what we call a birth cohort effect. So, it's really been since people born in the 1960s almost. That's where it started to rise.
Heather Simonsen: That makes me wonder why, right? That's the big question everybody wants to know. What are what are the theories right now?
Neli Ulrich: That's an excellent question. We don't know until today with certainty what causes this rise in colon or colorectal cancer. It's actually more in rectal cancer. There are obviously a lot of things that have changed since the 1960s that could have an impact, and a lot of research is underway right now and funded to understand the causes. So, in terms of hypotheses, it's far ranging. There obviously have been changes in diet since then. People have become more sedentary. Obesity has increased, as well. We know for sure that it must be an environmental factor or health behavior because the genetics haven’t changed. We know our genes have been stable, but none of these things really, fully explains this. Maybe the microbiome plays a role as well, but the microbiome is influenced by external factors.
Heather Simonsen: And the microbiome. Do you mind just telling people what that is?
Neli Ulrich: Yeah. Well, we as humans really are the home for a million or more microbiota, as we call them. So, that's bacteria and viruses and fungi that actually just live happily on our body and in our body. And some of these are very positive and support our bodily functions, and others of them can cause disease. So, we know now that some specific microbiota actually are associated with an increased risk of colon cancer overall, but they haven't emerged for early onset colorectal cancer yet.
Heather Simonsen: And the other thing I hear a lot is about like processed foods. Is that also being studied?
Neli Ulrich: So I mean, obviously our diet has changed substantially over the past decades and processed foods have increased, as have PFAS—so, some of the forever chemicals that are now part of our human environment in a very great extent. But we shouldn't also forget that even the non-processed foods have changed. So, if you think about fruits and vegetables that were grown 30 years ago, 40 years ago, there was probably less emphasis on size and durability, store storing ability and transport. And when you look at their phytochemical content, as we call it, so that's the content of healthy substances that we know that exist in fruits and vegetables, that actually has declined over time as well. There are a lot of these changes in our diet that have happened. However, they have happened for everybody and not just for early onset colorectal cancer. So, it's very complicated to address and sort out, and that's why we have, as epidemiologists, really started a concerted effort to understand what's going on.
The ColoCare Study (13:30)
Heather Simonsen: And here at Huntsman Cancer Institute, you're hard at work trying to understand this challenge, both medically in the clinic and in the lab. So, one of those efforts is the ColoCare study. What is ColoCare?
Neli Ulrich: The ColoCare study is what we call a cohort study. It's a group of patients, in this case, colorectal cancer patients, who have agreed to be part of research and donate some of their tissue that's removed during their surgery. Give some blood. They actually also give us stool samples to study the gut microbiome, and then they have agreed to be followed over time and fill out questionnaires about their health habits. And so, we're really excited about the opportunity of studying the causes of early onset colorectal cancer and survivorship in that context. And what makes ColoCare so special is also that it actually includes seven sites across the world. So, seven cancer institutes that work together. We have now more than 4300 patients who have agreed to be part of the study and continue to provide us with data and with biospecimens, and we're so grateful to the patients who are part of this research.
Heather Simonsen: And what has the ColoCare study revealed so far? |
Neli Ulrich: Well, maybe I'll just give you a couple of examples of what has been happening with ColoCare for early onset colorectal cancer. We obviously have a lot of research that has been ongoing, more than 150, actually more than 200 publications now. But let's say, like there was something that we were really excited about when we started to look for potential causes for early onset colorectal cancer. We used some of the blood samples we had available and the stool samples to just investigate whether there is a specific set of, like, markers in the blood or in the urine that could tell us what's going on, and that all pointed uniformly to oxidative stress being elevated in the early onset patients compared to patients who got colorectal cancer at a later age.
Now, what does oxidative stress mean? Oxidative stress is more a consequence than a cause. It can be a consequence of inflammation. It can be a consequence of obesity. It can be a consequence of a diet that's high in processed foods, so it was just interesting to see how there is this higher load of oxidative stress in patients. And unfortunately, you know, this was an initial study. The sample size was not definitive yet, so it needs to be followed up. But it just tells us some clues about what may be going on. Another big area that we study is survivorship, cancer survivorship. We're trying to do additional research to help understand how we can overcome toxicities for our early onset patients: the physical toxicity, financial toxicity, and also mental or psychological toxicity because it's very different when you're diagnosed at a younger age.
Heather Simonsen: Yeah, because you figure if you're in financial difficulty, the stress —and I mean that and also lack of opportunity and treatment and I can I can imagine that it would just snowball for people.
Neli Ulrich: Yes, and oftentimes people don't have the same amount of insurance. They have sometimes difficulties returning to their jobs, or they feel what happens to them or their partners is job lock. That they are worried about changing jobs because of health insurance reasons. And what's really interesting, I mean, we have a number of clinicians on our team, and they said, look, we're so good now with treatment. Everybody comes together, the clinical teams tries to do their best, and we can really do a lot. And then it's like there's a burning house, and everybody comes like firefighters and starts to extinguish those flames. And then afterwards, they enter the survivorship period, and they say often it feels like they're standing in front of a burned down house and don't know what to do. And so, we work closely with social services and try to understand how can we help our patients going forward.
Heather Simonsen: That is so fascinating, and I really do think it's something people don't think about.
Neli Ulrich: We should say, I mean, nowadays we can do so much with treatment. So, people become survivors. And while there is a worry about recurrence, many times this is all manageable now. But we do have to make sure that we think about the whole person and the whole person's health going forward, and how we can help them when cancer occurs at a young age.
Heather Simonsen: I wondered too if it's hard too because people don't want to talk about it. It's uncomfortable to talk about these parts of the body sometimes, but we need to talk about it, right?
Neli Ulrich: Yes, we we need to talk about it first of all for the ability of people to have their symptoms being taken seriously and being looked at, and then I think it's very uncomfortable when people have to talk about the side effects of the treatment. My dad had a rectal cancer. A friend just had an anal cancer, and it's just very painful. A lot of the treatments are very painful. You can't sit, you can't stand, you have a lot of fatigue, and people can get through it, and they will get through it. But I think we all just have to understand that this is a very painful disease in many in many of our patients, and we try to help them the best we can here at Huntsman Cancer Institute.
Heather Simonsen: And we talked about how this is, you know, in the headlines. It's a big story in the press, and young cancer patients are speaking out on social media about their experiences. What's one thing that you want people to understand about this disease or our efforts here at Huntsman Cancer Institute?
Neli Ulrich: Well, I think in general it's so helpful that people are speaking out and raising the point that yes, cancer can occur at a young age because the biggest challenge that exists is that people had symptoms but didn't take them seriously, or their clinicians didn't take them seriously, because it's just so uncommon. I had a friend who had anal cancer at age 45, and she's doing wonderful. She was part of a clinical trial and was able to get the newest drugs for colorectal cancer. So that was really terrific. But she had a physician who recognized that there was a problem, and so we just need to be sure that when now anybody has any symptoms, any gastrointestinal bleeding, any discomfort that is unusual, that they do get checked out, and they do take it seriously, and don't stop there until it's clear that their colon is clear.
Heather Simonsen: So, don't ignore those symptoms.
Neli Ulrich: Don't ignore those symptoms, and do get ideally a colonoscopy, because that is how we can image the colon and can see what's going on in there. If it's just a blood test, that's just not going to catch those earlier cancers. So, cancers that arise at a younger age typically grow more rapidly. So, delaying is also not a good idea.
Heather Simonsen: And are you confident we'll get an answer why this is happening in younger patients, so much more often?
Neli Ulrich: Oh yeah, absolutely. I think I'm confident that we will get answers, and then it's up to us to change the things that maybe are, you know, require change. I do want to say that it's interesting because initially a lot of people said, "oh, this rises together with the obesity epidemic.” But a lot of the patients who we see here and at other partnering institutions are very healthy. They are very physically active and certainly not obese. So that is not the explanation that we're looking for, and it's probably multiple factors that come together. So, we're doing a lot of research right now. I'm confident that we'll get answers. It will just take a little time.
Heather Simonsen: Well, thank you so much. It's fascinating research, and we're just so grateful that you're doing it and that you're in there and not giving up looking for answers.
Neli Ulrich: Yes, thank you. And it's not just us here at Huntsman Cancer Institute. It's colleagues across the nation and the world that are working on this and consider this a very important challenge that we need to overcome to deliver a cancer-free frontier.
Heather Simonsen: Thank you. Thank you so much.
Neli Ulrich: Thank you. It was great talking to you.
How Do You Let Go of the Rest of Your Life? (22:57)
Heather Simonsen: Let's go back to our conversation with Greg Barton. I had the chance to interview him not long after he married his wife, Jasmine. The day of our interview, he had just returned from his honeymoon. I asked him to talk me through his diagnosis, his symptoms, and what life looks like now.
Greg Barton: I got diagnosed September 18, 2025. I guess that was the colonoscopy, and then the 22nd is when it confirmed that I had metastatic cancer.
Heather Simonsen: And were you having any symptoms?
Greg Barton: Yeah, I was kind of having...I think I fall in the class of a lot of young people that don't have a ton of symptoms. I was kind of having nondescript symptoms in 2025. I was having just like cramping, and then it kind of makes sense now. But around holidays, if I'd eat a lot, my stomach would be upset. I'd be having cramping. Also, kind of in the summer, I think it started more that I'd have more frequent bowel movements. We're talking about colon cancer, so we could talk about this. But yeah, more frequent bowel movements, kind of softer consistency. I think the unfortunate part for me is I didn't bleed until I was basically diagnosed. So, it's pretty common for people with colon cancer to have bleeding that usually sends them into the doctor. But I think the first time that I had any blood in my stool was like August or September, which I was diagnosed September 18.
Heather Simonsen: And so really, I mean, what were you thinking? Just, I mean, those symptoms could kind of be anything, stress or something you ate.
Greg Barton: Yeah, I went into, I saw multiple doctors and thought it was like IBS. I thought of the worst, kind of before my colonoscopy. I thought maybe Crohn's or some other kind of inflammatory bowel disease.
Heather Simonsen: And then you get this diagnosis. What was your reaction?
Greg Barton: That's kind of a loaded question. It was, yeah, it was. I think it was shock. I, I don't know if it was like foresight, but I kind of, before the colonoscopy with the bleeding, you know, of course, went to the Google machine and saw that colon cancer was a possibility. And I'm sure, like a lot of people, after I got my colonoscopy, the doctor came in and sat me down and told me just kind of right out of the gate, he didn't mince words. He said, "There's a very large tumor. I couldn't get past it.” He said, "You know, we'll run it through pathology, but I'm pretty confident that this is cancer.”
Heather Simonsen: I mean, take us to that moment. Were you alone? Was a family member with you?
Greg Barton: Yeah, my dad was there to drive me home from getting anesthesia after the colonoscopy. In the moment, I was still pretty loopy from anesthesia, honestly, but it was just yeah, it was pure shock, you know.
Heather Simonsen: I'm sure. And right after your colonoscopy, I didn't know they could deliver a diagnosis that quickly.
Greg Barton: Yeah, I think the doctor was trying to be pretty compassionate. He said, "You know, we'll test this and make sure.” But he, I guess, had seen enough in his career that he was fairly confident that it was malignant.
Heather Simonsen: Yeah, I can't imagine, and and especially, I mean, you're so young. You're not. You're really not thinking about that, I would imagine.
Greg Barton: No, not at all. I mean, that's. I think why this disease is so sinister. You kind of have these nondescript bowel symptoms that like, who hasn't had some cramping and abdominal pain, right? And when you're that young, you don't immediately think, oh, this is cancer. I gotta, you know, I have to go to the hospital.
Heather Simonsen: Exactly. I'm just so sorry that you're going through this. I know you have strong family support, and how did you react to the news, and how did they react?
Greg Barton: You know, I think I went through kind of the cycle of grief. I think at first it was shock, and then honestly, there was kind of some peeling back of the layers as we got the diagnosis because at first it was just, you know, okay, there's a large tumor, and then four days later we got the news that it was metastatic and it’s spread multiple places. I know my dad was devastated. I had to then call my immediate family, and that was that was really hard. There was a lot of questions at that point that weren't answered. I think the hardest part was getting the metastatic diagnosis. I was in the car with my dad, and I had my CAT scan. And Epic, so nice that you can get updates sometimes before you talk to your doctor. And so, I got the results of the CT scan, and I remember opening it in the car with my dad and reading it, and I right away saw, you know, metastatic, which everyone knows that's a scary word to see in a CT scan. And I, I just remember I was totally, I was devastated, and he was as well. And he just said, "I'm so, so sorry. This is happening to you.”
Heather Simonsen: Did he stop? Did he pull over? Kept driving?
Greg Barton: Yeah, we were we were in a parking lot at that point, reading and reading the news. But it was, yeah, it was shocking. And nothing can really prepare you for that, I think. And then shortly after seeing a provider, I understood that it was likely terminal, and so I think at that point, I was despondent. I was so upset. I mean, how do you kind of let go of the rest of your life, knowing that you're likely to have a terminal cancer diagnosis?
Heather Simonsen: Well, yeah. I mean, I just I can't imagine how to process that, right? And you know, it would be natural to ask when you get a diagnosis like this, like why, right? Is that a question you've asked, or how do you handle those thoughts when they come your way?
Greg Barton: Yeah, it's a good question. Initially there was a lot of why. I think there was a lot of, there's a lot of theories right now around the early onset colorectal cancer kind of causes, and I don't think anything's been fully confirmed yet. But initially there was a lot of like, what did I eat? A little about me and diet because I think that's kind of important, is I've always been a healthy weight. I'm super active. I don't drink a lot. I drink very lightly. And then I'm like...high fiber diet. I even, when I was in college, once I could afford it, I stopped buying nitrated meat because I knew that was a cancer risk. So, stuff like that that I feel like I've always been very healthy and kind of lean towards the healthy side of an American diet. So, so yeah, there was there was a lot of why, and I think eventually and now I've just come to grips with the fact that it was likely completely random that we're all like every human is kind of rolling the cancer dice all the time, and for whatever reason, I was rolling more dice or just got really unlucky.
Heather Simonsen: Yeah. How does knowing that there's a rise in these cases affect your feelings about your own diagnosis?
Greg Barton: Yeah, I think going back to the question about was there kind of some self-blaming or kind of what did I do to deserve this? I think that that gave me a lot of kind of forgiveness for myself, knowing that it is part of this kind of rising trend in young people, and knowing that it's you know it wasn't that I did something. It's likely a combination of environmental factors that are causing this rise in young people.
Heather Simonsen: And what kind of treatment are you getting now?
Greg Barton: So, now I am on chemo that I get every two weeks. I get FULFOX, so I've had 11 rounds of chemotherapy up to this point, and I'm about to switch to quote unquote maintenance chemo. And then I also get a clinical trial that Huntsman has a drug called petosemtamab. That's a kind of next generation EGFR inhibitor.
Heather Simonsen: Okay, so the side effect is what?
Greg Barton: Yeah, there's quite a few side effects. Mostly skin toxicity, which looks like a rash. That's kind of it almost looks like acne that I get it on my chest and back and on my arms and on my face, and I'm super sensitive to the sun. I'm already a redhead, so I get like double dose. Right?
Heather Simonsen: Is it uncomfortable?
Greg Barton: No, the rash doesn't hurt too much. Honestly, the most uncomfortable thing is probably my cuticles and nails. You can see they all get kind of bleedy. So, I get a lot of ingrown nails. That's from the petosemtamab, I believe.
Heather Simonsen: And other than that, are you tolerating the drugs okay?
Greg Barton: Yeah, I think that's been the biggest thing for me. And what I'd honestly encourage anyone going through chemotherapy is initially it was really rough. You don't know what to expect, and you know chemo is bad. So, you're just like, this is horrible. And well, chemo's supposed to be horrible, but generally now, other than fatigue because of a lot of the premedications I get with my chemo, as well as anti-nausea, I generally do okay for the most part. It's mostly just fatigue and some joint pain. That's probably the number one side effects I get.
Heather Simonsen: And how do you deal with that? I mean, you seem to have such a good attitude. Is that hard won?
Greg Barton: I think that's a part of my personality pre cancer. If you were to ask kind of my biggest qualities, I would I would say I've always been very resilient, so I think that was already there. And then a lot of it's been support from loved ones. I've done some therapy at Huntsman from the social work team, so I think it's taken some work to get here for sure. But just generally, I think my attitude is that I'd rather spend my time happy and enjoying life than kind of moping, though I certainly do that. There's, I don't want to act like I'm perfect because there's been there's been some moping for sure.
Heather Simonsen: For sure, yeah, as to be expected. I find that really inspiring that you got the support you need. Like, tell me a little bit about that. I mean, we have social workers, you know, for every type of cancer. Was that helpful?
Greg Barton: Yeah, it was. It was super helpful. It took me a while to get connected to social work. I just initially wasn't super open to it because I haven't done a ton of therapy in my life. But once I connected with a social worker that I really clicked with, I think it was super helpful having someone outside of my family and friends, someone that's not super....I don't want to say not invested because I know she cares, but someone outside of my circle that I can talk to about the really hard things.
Heather Simonsen: Like objective.
Greg Barton: Absolutely, yeah, that's objective. And yeah, doesn't have that emotional investment maybe as much, so that we can talk about those kind of tough topics that would upset family or friends.
Life in Technicolor (33:18)
Heather Simonsen: That's so great. How do you approach life now?
Greg Barton: So, I think there's been a shift that I've always really tried to spend my time doing things that I enjoy, but I think there's a lot more intentionality in my life now. I'm recently married, as we mentioned, to my wife Jasmine, and we really try to maximize our time together, maximize doing things that we both enjoy. I think I've heard other cancer patients echo this: that once you get a diagnosis like this, your life's kind of in technicolor. And I would completely agree that, like the you know the grass smells better. You know, it's like you kind of take maybe things that you normally take for granted.
Heather Simonsen: Everything's amplified.
Greg Barton: Absolutely.
Heather Simonsen: And you and Jasmine, I would imagine, have had to have some difficult conversations.
Greg Barton: Yeah, definitely. She's, you know, first I gotta shout out her. She's an incredible woman. I got this diagnosis before we were married, and we did have some hard conversations. I mean, I told, I told Jasmine, you know, we haven't been dating that long. We know how this is going to end. It's going to be really messy, and she stuck with me through all of it and said she was with me the whole way, which was really cool.
Heather Simonsen: I have an idea. How would you feel about like calling Jasmine on speaker?
Greg Barton: Oh yeah, yeah.
Heather Simonsen: And just say it just could be kind of fun and say hi. We're recording our podcast. She'd be okay with that?
Greg Barton: Yeah.
[music]
Heather Simonsen: Hi, Jasmine. Welcome to delivering a cancer-free frontier. How are you?
Jasmine Barton: I'm good. How are you doing?
Heather Simonsen: Doing well. How are you doing with all of this? Greg has such a positive attitude, and just I just wanted to check in with you. And how are you doing with this diagnosis?
Jasmine Barton: Well, I mean, it's ups and downs. I feel like Greg's got a really good head on his shoulders, and he's pretty good about understanding realism versus, you know, still having hopes and a good outlook on what we want the future to be. I feel like I mean, I also had my ups and downs when we reached, you know, we were past six months on how long Greg’s been in treatment, and that was kind of shocking to say. Oh, we've come so far, but then at the same time, it's been a slog. So, it's kind of a weird combination of things. The fact is, we're not doing it alone, I guess, which has made all of this so much better than it could have been. Greg's family is such a huge support to him and to me, and everyone that we know. I'm really lucky that my work has been super flexible with me, and everyone there has been really understanding, and that's been a huge blessing. I know a lot of people don't have that, so I don't know. I’m doing okay.
Heather Simonsen: Thank you. Anything you want us to know, Jasmine, or anything you want to say?
Jasmine Barton: Oh, I don't know. I guess my technical like term when you read a lot of like cancer literature and when you're in this space, like people would consider me a caregiver, you know. And at this point in time, I don't necessarily think that term can be interpreted a lot of different ways. Like Greg's very self-sufficient right now, and I'm not giving a lot of physical care to him. But I think a lot of people in this position...I don't know. I've had a lot of, I don't know if imposter syndrome is the right word, but it's hard to feel like there's anything that I can do that helps right now, and I think I just have to keep reminding myself: you just show up as who you are, and I don't know. Hopefully, I am helping Greg out.
Greg Barton: No, not at all. No, Jasmine's, Jasmine's incredibly helpful. She's minimizing what she does. She's, initially when I was diagnosed, and still, she's really good about making me breakfast in the morning. I don't really have an appetite most of the time, and so unless I'm kind of mechanically thinking about it, I won't eat. And so, Jasmine's been really helpful with food and helping me gain weight that I lost after surgery, so that's been a ton of help. And I think the hard part she mentions is like with chemo and just when I'm not feeling well is Jasmine's such a helper and somebody that loves and cares for other people. It's hard to see someone that you love that you can't really make them feel better. You know, there's only so much you can do, so I think that's a tough part of it.
Jasmine Barton: Yeah, and I mean, Greg's very eloquent in saying what I'm trying to say. Yeah, I mean that's it. And I would just say to anyone who is in that same position, like you just got to give yourself grace because we can't, we just can't control it. You know, there's nothing we can control, and we can all we can do is just show up as the best version of ourselves every day, and if we mess up, try again the next day. Like I'm sometimes, and Greg's going to be too nice about this, but I'm sometimes really short with Greg.
And it's really difficult for me because he seems like sometimes, he seems like he's perfectly healthy, and so it's easy to forget the situation we're in and forget that he's not 100% himself, even when he seems like he is sometimes, because chemo has a really big effect on your body. Obviously, cancer does generally, but the treatments have a lot of side effects, and sometimes they're not visible. Sometimes it's a lot of like emotional slog or just fatigue, and it's a lot to deal with. So, I would say to anyone in my position, just give yourself some grace and start again the next day, and try to enjoy every moment.
Heather Simonsen: Well, thank you for joining us today.
Greg Barton: Thanks, sweetie. We'll let you get back to work. Thanks for contributing.
Jasmine Barton: No worries. Thanks for letting me join. Enjoy the rest of your conversation.
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Heather Simonsen: And what is day-to-day life like for you now?
Greg Barton: Yeah, it's changed a lot. I I joke that I'm retired from my job, but I'm on long term disability, which has been great. I had the finances to step away from work and really focus on treatment and then doing the things I enjoy. So, most days, if I'm feeling up to it, I'm usually outdoors, either fly fishing or rock climbing or skiing or something that I enjoy. And I'm definitely not as good of a rock climber as I used to be. That I've lost strength in doing some of the activities I enjoy, but for the most part, I'm able to work around chemo. I've gone skiing while I'm hooked up. I take a pump of chemotherapy home for 48 hours, and so I've actually gone skiing with my chemo attached to me, which my oncologist kind of laughs at.
I've also been able to travel on chemo, and so I've even though it seems kind of crazy traveling on chemo, usually the day after I get my infusion in clinic. I'll usually set that up so that I'll fly that day because usually day one after my infusion, I don't feel too crappy. So you know, it's changed my life in a lot of ways, and I have to work around feeling fatigued and not feeling like myself. And then on the days where I'm not feeling up to it, one of my hobbies is fly tying, so tying flies for fly fishing. And so that's a really good hobby that you can do when you kind of feel like crap. That you can, I can sit down and tie flies or read a book.
Heather Simonsen: What would you like to say to other young people who have gotten a diagnosis like yours? Maybe say somebody who just got this diagnosis.
Greg Barton: Yeah, a couple things. First, I would say it gets easier. I think that the hardest times are kind of those first weeks or months after a diagnosis where your head's just spinning and it's moving really fast. Lots of doctor's appointments. I remember I was so overwhelmed. The other thing I would say is going kind of going back to treatment and chemotherapy is, I wouldn't assume anything's normal. Don't assume that you're just going to be massively suffering all the time. The first round of chemo I actually didn't even make it to Mario Capecchi Way before I was throwing up. I think I threw up like 20 or 30 times my first round of chemo, and I thought that was normal. I was like, "Oh well, this is going to be my life now, throwing up this many times.” And you know, I told my oncology team, and they were like, "that's absolutely not normal. I got on anti-nauseas that work really well for me, and now I don't even have nausea on chemo for the most part.”
Heather Simonsen: That's great. So, there are ways to mitigate those really bad side effects.
Greg Barton: Absolutely. While I'm thinking about it, Heather, one other thing I would say is I would be really careful with social media and kind of all the fake cancer treatments or kind of new popularized drugs that aren't proven for cancer. I would, you know, I trust my medical team a lot, and so if there's something that you think may help your cancer, whether it's like natural, you know, vitamins or a different medication, I would say talk to your oncology team, and especially when you're googling, just drop like clinical trial in front of whatever you're reading about because it's likely it's been tested. And most of these things that are super popularized for cancer treatment have had clinical trials that show they may or may not do anything.
Heather Simonsen: Yeah, it's like on the one hand, information is so accessible. On the other hand, misinformation is equally accessible.
Greg Barton: Yeah.
Heather Simonsen: So you really have to be judicious.
Greg Barton: Yeah, you have to be really careful, and especially when you when you have cancer, you're kind of you're desperate for, you know, a cure, a solution, and so you can...it's really easy to grab on to things that aren't necessarily in your best interest.
Heather Simonsen: Does it kind of feel like the eyes of the world are on this diagnosis, though? I mean, early diagnosis for colon cancer. It's in the news. It's it's everywhere. Does that make you hopeful for progress?
Greg Barton: Yeah, it does. Yeah, there's a ton being done. I mean, there's always a ton being done in cancer research, but I think once you're being treated at a cancer hospital and you see these huge research buildings, you don't realize how many you know hundreds or millions of people across the world are working on this problem, and with new drugs coming out every day. I mean, even the clinical trial drug I'm on didn't exist a couple years ago, and so I'm really looking forward to all the progress that's being made, and kind of hopeful. And that's what gives me hope is that I'm hopeful that chemotherapy and kind of the treatments I'm on right now will give me that trajectory to get on to the next best thing.
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Heather Simonsen: Greg wanted us to share an update. In July 2026, Greg underwent cytoreductive surgery to remove the metastasis from his peritoneum, the lining of the abdominal cavity. The doctor who performed the surgery was Dr. Clark Gamblin, who we featured on our last episode. When he was first diagnosed, Greg's cancer was so severe this surgery wasn't even an option. Now he has no sign of cancer in his peritoneum, thanks to chemotherapy and the clinical trial drug he's taking.
I've known Greg Barton and his family for many years, and I feel so lucky and honored that he would share his story with us. Thank you to Greg and Dr. Neli Ulrich for joining us today. To our dedicated listeners, we are thankful for your support. For additional resources, be sure to check out our show notes. If you want to stay connected with us and be the first to know about upcoming episodes. Subscribe on your favorite podcast platform. Please log on to Apple Podcasts and leave us a five-star review. This helps other people like you find this podcast. If you have questions, comments, suggestions for future episodes, or a personal story you'd like to share, please visit our website, HuntsmanCancer.org. This episode is produced by Nina Earnest. Theme music composed by Mix at Six Studios. Additional music from Warner Chappell Music. I'm your host Heather Simonson. A special thanks to the Huntsman Cancer Institute Communications and Public Affairs team.