Keep Showing Up: Jake Trego on stage four colon cancer, caregiving, and communityRon Belany talks with Jake Trego about living beyond a stage four colon cancer diagnosis, from the shock of diagnosis through surgery, chemotherapy, radiation, ablations, an HAI pump, and a liver transplant. Jake also shares how his wife Roz, his community, and a simple mantra helped him stay grounded through five years of treatment and uncertainty. In this episode, Jake gets honest about the physical toll of treatment, the emotional weight of survivor’s guilt, and the importance of talking openly about fear instead of carrying it alone. The conversation centers on resilience, marriage, vulnerability, and the power of showing up one day at a time. Key topicsJake describes life before diagnosis at 33, when he was active, married to Roz, playing basketball, and ignoring abdominal pain until it became too severe to dismiss.He shares the emergency room visit that led to a scan showing a mass on his descending colon and spots on his liver, resulting in a stage four colon cancer diagnosis.Ron and Jake discuss the isolation that can come with a young adult cancer diagnosis, especially when it is hard to find peers going through the same thing.Jake explains the first surgery, the colostomy used to get him to chemotherapy faster, and how the tumor shrank by 50 percent after the first six rounds.He walks through the long treatment arc, including another surgery, six more rounds of clean up chemo, several liver ablations, intravenous chemo, SBRT, Y90 radiation, and roughly 40 total rounds of chemotherapy.Jake credits Roz as a major reason he is still alive, describing how she tracked appointments, asked questions, managed details, and advocated for better options like the HAI pump at Ohio State.The conversation highlights community support, from Venmo and GoFundMe help to blue porch lights for colon cancer awareness, police checking in, and fans sending him baseball hats.Jake talks about mindset: keeping a goal-oriented focus, drawing strength from people who believed in him, and using the phrase “keep showing up” as a daily reset.He opens up about therapy, anxiety, depression, and the moments when fear surfaced during arguments or low points in treatment.Jake explains how he reframed his medical devices and side effects as burdens turned into blessings, focusing on what they were doing to keep him alive rather than only on what they took away.He discusses survivor’s guilt after losing friends and a college roommate to cancer, and how that grief became another source of motivation to keep going.The episode closes with advice Jake would give his younger self: talk to your wife, be the husband, and show appreciation for the caregiver carrying a second burden. Discover: Keep Showing Up documentary https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5pHNIp0ZZY