• Passengers on an abruptly halted round-the-world cruise say they were given just hours to disembark.
• Villa Vie Residences told travelers at 6 a.m. on Tuesday they needed to leave the ship by 2 p.m.
• “We are heartbroken,” one couple who lived aboard the ship for two years told Business Insider.

Passengers on a live-aboard round-the-world cruise say they were abruptly asked to leave the ship and given only hours to disembark.

Villa Vie Residences, which operates the residential cruise ship Villa Vie Odyssey, said on Tuesday it had halted operations due to surging fuel costs.

The ship was docked at the port of Sihanoukville in Cambodia when the announcement was made, with passengers saying they were given only eight hours to disembark.

“On October 27, 2026, we received notice from the CEO at around 6 a.m. that all residents had to disembark by 2 p.m. that day,” passengers Lanette Canen and John Bodin told Business Insider by email.

Canen and Bodin have been on the Odyssey since it first set sail and run a YouTube channel called Living Life on a Cruise about their experiences on board.

“We knew leaving was a possibility, but the eight-hour notice still surprised us,” they said.

The couple shared a video on their YouTube channel that appears to show the moment a staff member announced that passengers must leave the ship.

“Unfortunately, they were unable to secure the fuel necessary to continue operations,” a male voice says in the video.

A notice on the Villa Vie Residences website says the company is working with residents to arrange temporary living arrangements and that it is evaluating restructuring options over the next 60 days.

Villa Vie Residences did not immediately respond to requests for comment. CEO Kathy Villalba and executive chairman Mikael Petterson did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Soaring fuel costs

Villa Vie Residences said in a statement on Tuesday that the surging cost of fuel since the beginning of the Iran war had made operating the cruise liner increasingly difficult.

The company said its monthly fuel expenses per cabin, which had previously averaged about $1,800, had risen as much as 344% in parts of Asia, to an estimated $6,000 to $8,000.

“Since the conflict began in late February, we have taken significant steps to reduce fuel consumption, including slowing the itinerary and spending more time in port,” Villa Vie Residences said.

“Those measures have not been enough to offset the extraordinary increase in fuel costs, and we have been unable to continue carrying the resulting operating losses.”

On August 1, Villalba, the CEO, sent residents a message titled “Urgent operational update” on an internal messaging platform. In the message, she referenced a “fuel contribution” that had been previously requested of residents. Business Insider has viewed a screenshot of the message.

“When the fuel contribution was requested several months ago, participation was not universal,” she wrote in the message. “The contributions received helped some, but they covered only part of the extraordinary increase in fuel costs.”

Villalba wrote that the “cash-flow” challenge had continued, and the Odyssey needed 650 metric tons of fuel, adding that fuel prices had almost doubled.

“We have now reached a critical point. The lack of full participation, combined with the unprecedented increase in fuel costs, means we must make immediate and creative operational decisions to preserve the voyage,” her message said.

It continued, “We are asking every Resident who did not previously contribute to please do so now. We are also asking those who are able to provide additional support to consider helping with this immediate fuel requirement.”

Villalba described the financial need as “real, immediate, and necessary to keep Odyssey moving.” It went on, “This is a moment when preserving our home and continuing the voyage requires support beyond contractual minimums from those who are able to provide it.”

Residents scrambled to leave their cabins

Among the passengers asked to disembark on Tuesday with only a few hours’ notice was Barbara Fiegel, 62, who has lived with her partner aboard the ship since December 2024.

“Everybody’s just shocked, everybody’s just saddened by this whole issue,” she said. “We’re still processing, trying to debate what we’re going to do.”

Fiegel said she and her partner booked a hotel room in Cambodia, then returned to the ship Tuesday evening and Wednesday afternoon to empty their safe and pack their belongings. “Today, as we approached, as we went back on the shuttle back to the ship, I couldn’t stop crying,” she said.

They plan to return on Thursday to collect their remaining items. Fiegel described the atmosphere on the Odyssey as a “ghost town.”

Joel Greiff, 57, moved aboard the ship at the start of the month. “I was planning to live on the ship for 10, 20, or 73 years,” he said. “I don’t think that will be happening.”

When residents were told to disembark, Greiff emptied his cabin. “I personally grabbed everything,” he said.

He said he would like to return if Villa Vie Residences resumes operations. If not, he is planning to move to Thailand. In the meantime, he has rented an apartment in Cambodia for a month.

Greiff said he plans to return to the Odyssey on Thursday to assist other residents and “help with their luggage, help them find a place, and just start getting them and all their stuff off the ship.”

Have you spent any time on the Villa Vie Odyssey as a cabin owner, renter, or staff member? If you have a story to share, get in touch with this reporter: jzitser@businessinsider.com.

• Ethan Pines shot Elizabeth Holmes for a Forbes cover story in 2014.
• The photo of Holmes holding a blood vial has become synonymous with the disgraced Theranos founder.
• Pines spoke to Business Insider about meeting Holmes and his thoughts on “You Can See Everything.”

As photographer Ethan Pines drove to the Theranos offices in Silicon Valley, all he could think about was how to make his shoot with its founder, Elizabeth Holmes, stand out.

It was 2014, and the hype around Holmes’ health technology company, which boasted it could run hundreds of medical and diagnostic tests using only a few drops of blood, had hit its zenith. The 30-year-old Holmes was on the verge of becoming the youngest self-made female billionaire with a net worth of $4.5 billion.

Pines had photographed CEOs before, and he was racking his brain for ways to make the visuals for Holmes’ Forbes cover story memorable.

He never could have predicted that his shot of Holmes would become the symbol of the now-disgraced CEO’s meteoric rise and spectacular fall, not to mention imitated on TV series, put on billboards, and discussed in a popular documentary.

Twelve years later, Pines’ photo of Holmes has re-entered the zeitgeist thanks to Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim’s hit documentary, “You Can See Everything,” which chronicles the life of Holmes and her partner, Billy Evans, in the final weeks before Holmes reports to prison for defrauding investors.

Pines’ famous shot is brought up several times in the doc. At one point, while having her body scanned to create an AI hologram, Holmes breaks down, recalling how her image has become a symbol of duplicity in the press.

This isn’t the first time Pines’ photo of Holmes has gone viral. The shot was used on the poster for Alex Gibney’s 2019 documentary on Holmes, “The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley.” The shot is also re-created in the 2022 Hulu miniseries “The Dropout,” which stars Amanda Seyfried as Holmes. But Pines said “You Can See Everything” has brought an even larger wave attention to his work.

“I posted on my Instagram the entire shoot in a flipbook motion piece, and it has a million views,” Pines said. “My posts don’t get anywhere near that.”

The making of an iconic shot

When Pines arrived on set that day in 2014, he knew he wanted to take photographs that functioned as both a portrait of a young founder and a showcase of her invention.

“In my mind, I pictured a tight shot with her holding something up,” Pines told Business Insider.

Halfway through the shoot, he asked Holmes’ team if there was a suitable object they could use. They obliged with a small vial of blood (well, fake blood; the real stuff, he was told, was in a temperature-controlled lab down the hall).

Once Holmes held the vial up to her face, everything clicked into place.

“Sometimes when you’re shooting, you’re thinking to yourself, ‘This is a gift,'” Pines recalled. “With her big eyes and that intimate, interesting expression, I felt we had something.”

Unlike the typical photoshoot with a CEO, where Pines would only get around 10 to 20 minutes to photograph his subject before they rushed off to attend to other matters, Holmes was generous with her time.

Over a couple hours, Pines said he took a total of 220 shots — 52 of her holding the blood vial — in three different setups. What stood out to him the most was Holmes’ persona. She was relaxed and down to earth, chatting it up with Pines and his assistant. She’d done her own hair and makeup for the shoot.

Pines recognized a similar easy charisma on display in “You Can See Everything.”

“I cannot say if she’s being real in this movie or putting on a facade to Nathan Fielder, but it reminded me of my experience,” he said. “I felt she was really approachable; she’s humble, makes a lot of eye contact, and doesn’t come across as cocky or uptight. Oblivious to everything going on around her.” 

With the doc a hit at the box office, Pines doesn’t think the Holmes hype will die down anytime soon. He’s constantly seeing reminders of his iconic photo.

“I was at a Halloween carnival for my daughter’s school, and there were at least two people dressed as Elizabeth Holmes with the little blood vial,” he said. “The whole thing is a trip.” 

“You Can See Everything” is in theaters now.

• Apple unveiled its first-ever MacBook Pro with a touchscreen.
• It starts at $2,899 for the 14-inch model.
• The price of personal computers has risen due, in part, to a memory and storage shortage.

Apple’s MacBook Pro is entering its iPad era.

Apple announced its first MacBook Pro with a touchscreen on Wednesday during its “Pro and Tell” event in Los Angeles. The touchscreen models mark a major evolution of Apple’s traditional MacBooks that rely on keyboards, computer mouses, or trackpads for input.

The laptop, featuring what Apple calls its “PROLED XDR display,” is powered by the company’s M5 Pro and M5 Max chips and includes a Dynamic Island cutout in the screen, similar to recent iPhones.

Touching your MacBook Pro won’t come cheap

The touchscreen MacBook Pros are available for preorder on Wednesday and will officially launch on November 6. Prices for the 14-inch model start at $2,899, and the 16-inch model starts at $3,399.

That’s a notable price jump from the 14-inch MacBook Pro with M6, which Apple announced on Tuesday. That model starts at $1,999 and has a Liquid Retina XDR display.

Apple’s price hikes come as the tech industry weathers a global memory shortage driven by the expansion of AI and cloud infrastructure. With other PC makers also boosting prices, consumer demand across the industry has wavered, according to Counterpoint Research. The tech market research firm said global PC shipments have fallen 21% year-to-year from July to September.

Apple has raised prices for its products several times in recent months, including in June when the company raised the cost of some Mac and iPad models by as much as $300.

The touchscreen MacBook Pros are the latest product drop from Apple. The company announced a new iPad Mini with an OLED screen on Monday and a new iMac with its M6 chip on Tuesday.

• Microsoft is offering buyouts to around 60,000 employees.
• Chris Williams, former Microsoft VP of HR, said waiting for a better offer may or may not backfire.
• He shared what employees who are offered a buyout should consider and what they may not realize.

Microsoft is offering buyout packages to some 60,000 employees, or more than 25% of the workforce. That’s a huge number in any terms, and it sent a signal and shock wave through the industry this week.

I’m the former VP of HR for Microsoft, and although I’ve been away from the company for some time and have no insider information, having been on the inside at Microsoft and in the industry for 50 years, here is what Microsoft employees should be considering — and what they may not realize about taking a buyout offer.

Your buyout offer may or may not be the best offer you get

During a buyout, position, tenure, level, and other factors are taken into account for each bespoke offer. The offer is likely to include compensation, benefit continuation, and possibly some acceleration or continuation of equity vesting.

That said, Microsoft might not offer more generous buyouts than severance packages, but companies usually offer better terms to people who take a voluntary separation than people who get laid off. That is not only to induce employees to go voluntarily, but also because the costs to the company are less if these workers voluntarily leave. There is less legal risk, time, and expense. It’s also simply easier for the company to manage.

If you’re offered a buyout, I usually find it could be the best offer you’ll get. If it’s not, you could be settling for the same offer as someone in a layoff and miss out on collecting unemployment.

A buyout can force some very hard career choices

If you get a buyout offer, looking at your budget should be your next step. Does the offer provide you with enough to retire? Enough to support an extended job search? The buyout can be a good forcing function for some very hard career choices.

Spend time looking at your cash flows, and pay particular attention to benefits. For many, healthcare costs are a substantial part of their budget. Weighing the buyout offer against continued coverage is often a tipping point in the decision.

Also consider any equity vesting dates you may have. Compare when you might vest with and without the offer, as those dates can mean a significant change in your investments. Whether you should take the buyout is highly dependent on both the offer and your situation. If you had retirement anywhere in sight, this offer might be just the trigger you need to move on. Perhaps the best offer you’ll ever see.

However, if you need to continue working, there’s a great deal more to consider.

Taking a buyout can give you a head start in a tough job market

The tech industry job market has been rough for the last year or so, and shows all the signs of getting worse. If the buyout doesn’t afford you the ability to retire, you should plan on an extended period of job searching, maybe six months or more. It’s tough out there. Be prepared.

One thing to consider if you need to continue working is that taking the buyout might give you a short head start in the job market. Assuming Microsoft and others follow this up with more layoffs like they did the last time, the technical job market will be flooded with quality people. Of course, you can search for a job while you have one, but taking the buyout gives you time for a full-time job search.

In any case, if a job search is in your future, don’t delay. This market shows no sign of getting better.

Finally, if you’re offered a buyout, don’t ignore it. It’s a sign. I’d read it as a clear signal from the company about your value, at least from their perspective. You can bet on the odds, but if follow-up layoffs happen, I’d bet that those who declined the buyout are somewhere on that list.

Buyout or not, some things to do

This buyout is the latest signal of a broad realignment of the job market, at least in the tech sector. Even if you aren’t offered it or don’t think you’re at risk of later layoffs, you’d be wise to keep all your options open.

Get your résumé up to date. Spend time honing it, emphasizing the clearest set of skills you can. When a market is contracting, the safest bet is having a particular skill someone is looking for. When times are tight, the generalist is often the first person let go.

Work with and expand your network. Have coffee or a Zoom chat with everyone you know. Peers in other companies, even other industries, are invaluable when things get tough. Especially when the world is changing, and predicting the next hot spot is so hard, having as many warm connections across industries is a huge asset.

Don’t go asking for jobs as much as keep those connections alive. You never know when someone’s manager will say, “We need someone like that.” And your friend can say, “I know just the person.”

Whether you are offered a buyout, or whether you decide to take it or not, having a network of people to connect with is your single biggest career asset.

What to do if you get a buyout offer

Budget first, and outreach next.

Carefully decide your near- and long-term financial future, and make the decision from hard facts. Then connect with people you know across industries, far and wide. Those connections will be excellent sounding boards and could well provide the path to your next role, or the friends you need in retirement.

When contacted about this story, a Microsoft spokesperson pointed Business Insider to its statement on the official Microsoft Blog, which read in part, “Today, we’re introducing a new Voluntary Exit Offer (VEO) to eligible employees within participating organizations.” They added that “the VEO is similar to a standard severance offer, which varies by market. The offer includes payment based on completed service and base pay, as well as career transition services, which includes career coaching and job search assistance.”

• Sam Bankman-Fried’s Anthropic stake was liquidated in bankruptcy court two years ago.
• The feds seized shares belonging to two co-conspirators, Caroline Ellison and Nishad Singh.
• The government quietly sold those Anthropic shares last year. It’s unclear where the money will go.

A little over a year ago, the federal government acquired a stake in Anthropic without paying a penny.

The shares were seized from associates of the crypto fraudster Sam Bankman-Fried. From there, they disappeared into a legal black hole.

As Anthropic rockets toward what could be the biggest IPO in history, those shares could now be worth billions of dollars.

Bankman-Fried’s own Anthropic stake was liquidated in the bankruptcy of his failed cryptocurrency exchange. The Anthropic equity owned by Caroline Ellison and Nishad Singh, two associates who invested alongside him, took a different path. The government seized those shares and sold them to existing Anthropic shareholders, according to a person familiar with the sale.

It’s still unclear whether the proceeds will be paid out to victims of the $11 billion fraud case, or if the feds will just keep the money.

It also remains a mystery which investors bought Singh’s and Ellison’s stock and how much they paid, but Anthropic shares have been on such a dizzying climb that it’s likely those investors made a killing on them.

Bankman-Fried was convicted in 2023 on fraud and money laundering charges and sentenced to 25 years in prison after the collapse of his cryptocurrency empire. Prosecutors said he used his crypto hedge fund, Alameda Research, to siphon billions of dollars from customers of FTX, his crypto exchange.

The story of the crypto criminals’ Anthropic shares is a tale with extraordinary elements, including one of the biggest financial frauds in modern history, a messy bankruptcy docket, and a company that experienced one of the fastest appreciations in business history as the world suddenly realized AI’s existential importance.

An intelligent investment

Bankman-Fried, Singh, and Ellison each invested in Anthropic’s 2022 Series B funding round. Bankman-Fried bought $500 million worth, which according to court records represented 13.56% of Anthropic at the time. Singh acquired $40 million in shares, and Ellison acquired $10 million in shares, court records reviewed by Business Insider show.

The artificial intelligence company’s valuation has soared over the past four years. On the secondary market, Anthropic has been valued at $1.5 trillion. It is the most valuable private company in the world, according to Crunchbase.

The Anthropic shares purchased by Singh and Ellison could together be worth between $4.17 billion and $5.03 billion today, based on the $965 billion valuation the company announced this May, according to Olav Sorenson, who teaches venture capital strategy at UCLA. Harrison Rolfes, an analyst at PitchBook, put the combined figure at $2.62 billion. If Anthropic went public at a $2 trillion valuation, the shares would be worth about $5.44 billion, Rolfes said.

Four of Bankman-Fried’s close friends and executives at his companies pleaded guilty as co-conspirators. Three of them, including Singh and Ellison, testified against him.

Ellison was the CEO of Alameda Research, which traded and invested funds that belonged to FTX depositors. She was also Bankman-Fried’s on-and-off romantic partner. Singh, an FTX executive and early employee, misrepresented the exchange’s revenue to investors.

After the collapse of FTX, Bankman-Fried’s Anthropic shares — which were owned by Clifton Bay, an entity affiliated with Alameda Research — ended up in bankruptcy court along with the other dredged-up remains of his companies. His Anthropic shares were liquidated to pay FTX’s creditors.

The estate in 2024 sold Bankman-Fried’s Anthropic shares to a few dozen buyers for a total of $1.3 billion, more than double what he paid. The largest stake went to an entity affiliated with a United Arab Emirates sovereign wealth fund, bankruptcy court filings show.

The feds take a stake in Anthropic

As part of their sentences, a judge required Singh and Ellison to forfeit their Anthropic shares, which prosecutors said could be considered proceeds of their crimes.

At Singh’s sentencing hearing, one of his attorneys, Andrew Goldstein, said Singh purchased his shares before participating in the criminal conspiracy and “he actually may have had a legitimate legal claim” to the shares but agreed to give them up as part of his plea agreement “because it was the right thing to do.”

Reached for comment for this story, Goldstein told Business Insider that Singh hopes the government is able to quickly distribute proceeds of the sale to FTX victims. An attorney for Ellison declined to comment.

A federal judge ordered Ellison’s and Singh’s Anthropic shares to be transferred to the federal government, which took ownership of Ellison’s shares in February 2025 and Singh’s in April of that year, according to previously unreported court records.

Ordinarily, victims of crimes are compensated through a restitution process, which is overseen by courts. But the number of potential FTX victims could be in the millions, prosecutors said in court filings. As a result, the judge ruled, victim compensation would be handled through a process called remission, which is overseen by the Justice Department.

During Ellison’s sentencing hearing, Justice Department prosecutors told the judge that the DOJ would either set up its own claims administration process to compensate victims, or work with the FTX bankruptcy process to identify victims and provide forfeited funds to them.

At the time, FTX’s bankruptcy process was in full swing. A Delaware court appointed Sullivan & Cromwell, the elite Wall Street law firm, to untangle the company’s assets, figure out who was owed money, and pay them.

The creditors in the FTX bankruptcy, prosecutors noted, largely overlapped with FTX’s victims. They were generally depositors, lenders, and investors who were defrauded by Bankman-Fried and other executives. Prosecutors said the Justice Department could work with the bankruptcy estate’s lawyers to get money back to them, as it had in previous large-scale financial frauds such as Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme.

There was an unusual twist that set the FTX bankruptcy apart. Bankman-Fried’s investments — especially the Anthropic shares, along with some cryptocurrency — had grown substantially in value since FTX’s collapse. Earlier in 2024, the Sullivan & Cromwell lawyers who’d taken over FTX projected that all the creditors would be repaid in full, with interest.

The Marshals take control

While prosecutors said they intended to use Singh’s and Ellison’s Anthropic shares for remission, the Justice Department could technically do whatever it wanted with them, according to Duncan Levin, a white-collar defense attorney who teaches a course on forfeiture at Harvard Law School.

“It’s a very opaque process,” he said. “It’s completely at the discretion, by law, of the attorney general of the United States.”

Typically, when the feds seize shares of private companies through criminal asset forfeiture, they send the shares to the US Marshals Service Complex Assets Unit for liquidation. The unit tries to value the shares as any other investor would, said Michael Bachner, a white-collar criminal and securities litigation attorney.

“They may look to: What would an institutional purchaser pay for these securities?” Bachner said. “Are there funds that are valuing the securities? Is there a secondary market already out there?”

For the sale of the Anthropic shares, timing was crucial. The Marshals Service is supposed to preserve as much value as possible, Bachner said. By the time the feds got hold of the shares, Anthropic had become an economy-shifting AI giant. In its March 2025 Series E fundraising round, Anthropic was worth $61.5 billion. By its Series G round at the start of 2026, it was worth $380 billion.

At the same time, each fundraising round diluted the Series B shares. The FTX estate told the bankruptcy court that Bankman-Fried’s shares, which in 2022 represented 13.56% of Anthropic, represented 7.84% of the AI company in January 2024.

The Marshals Service sold Singh’s and Ellison’s shares to existing Anthropic investors sometime last year, according to the person with knowledge of the sale.

It’s not clear when exactly the agency sold the shares, to which investors, how those investors were chosen, at what price the shares were sold, or how much money the government made in the sale. Depending on when they were sold in 2025, the combined shares could have been worth between $300 million and $1.1 billion, according to Sorenson, the UCLA professor. Rolfes, the PitchBook analyst, estimated a range between $250 million and $630 million, depending on the timing.

The Marshals Service declined to comment. A representative for the Justice Department said information about asset sales and victim compensation is confidential.

The revenue from the sale of Singh’s and Ellison’s Anthropic shares doesn’t appear to have been transferred to the FTX estate as of the end of June this year, according to bankruptcy court filings from the estate, which continues to compensate victims and creditors.

The FTX estate received $638 million last year from assets seized by the Justice Department, according to the estate’s annual report for 2025. It’s not clear from the filings where those funds came from. The estate expects to receive about $400 million more from the government at some point in the future, according to the annual report. That would include proceeds from cryptocurrency and other investments made by Bankman-Fried.

One of Bankman-Fried’s victims, Sunil Kavuri, told Business Insider that the Justice Department should use the proceeds of Ellison’s and Singh’s Anthropic shares to compensate victims. It would be “diabolical” for the government to hold onto the proceeds, he said.

Victims haven’t actually been made whole, he said, because the bankruptcy court calculated the losses of FTX depositors using the time of FTX’s bankruptcy declaration, when crypto prices were at a low ebb. Kavuri previously argued in bankruptcy court that the FTX estate should have held on to its Anthropic shares for longer to take advantage of the company’s swift growth.

Representatives for the FTX estate declined to comment. The Justice Department spokesperson said the matter was ongoing, and that the DOJ “prioritizes victim compensation from forfeiture and takes all steps to ensure forfeited funds are provided to victims.”

The government could end up just keeping the money, Bachner said.

“They’ve invested millions and millions and millions of dollars in prosecuting Bankman-Fried. And they want to get at least reimbursed for their costs, so sometimes they’ll do that,” he said. “It’s really a unilateral government decision.”

Jack Newsham and Katie Roof contributed reporting for this story.

Correction: August 31, 2026 — An earlier version of this story misstated the number of co-conspirators who testified against Sam Bankman-Fried. It was three.

Update: August 31, 2026 — This story has been updated to reflect Singh’s role in the FTX fraud case.

Correction: October 27, 2026 — FTX bankruptcy court filings don’t make clear where the Justice Department obtained the $638 million it transferred to the estate. A previous version of this story mischaracterized the filings.

• Azucena “Suzy” Reyes went to the ER several times for nausea and stomach pain.
• After months of back and forth, she finally learned she had a mass in her large intestine.
• Despite first being told she was ‘too young’ for colon cancer, she was diagnosed at stage 3B.

No matter how healthy she tried to eat or how often she ran 4 miles at her community college, Azucena “Suzy” Reyes felt bloated in her stomach.

“I looked like I was pregnant,” Reyes, who’s 43 and based in Alvin, Texas, told Business Insider. At 32, she was studying to be a certified nurse assistant while running a construction company with her husband and raising their four children together.

Then, her symptoms got worse. She was frequently exhausted, which she attributed to working out and being busy. She started getting fevers and feeling intense nausea. There was also her severe stomach pain.

“I really thought it was an ovary that had burst because it was that painful,” she said.

Between August and October in 2015, Reyes went to the ER four times, originally diagnosed with inflammation in her intestines. When she finally saw a GI doctor in October, she was sent to the ER a fifth time, where she had emergency surgery and learned she had stage 3 colon cancer.

“I was scared because I did not know anything about colon cancer,” Reyes said. “It was very, very dramatic to me because I didn’t want my children to go through the fear of thinking that I was going to die.”

She was told she likely didn’t have cancer because of her age and race

After the ER staff looked at her vitals, Reyes was first diagnosed with colitis and enteritis, inflammation of the small and large intestines, as well as a microperforation. She was sent home with antibiotics. When the pain didn’t go away, she returned to the ER and was put on a PICC line to administer medication and kept in the hospital for three weeks. Around the same time, Reyes tried to book a GI appointment and was put on a waitlist until early October.

When the PICC line was removed, the nausea came back. The next two ER visits didn’t yield more answers. By the time she finally saw her GI, she couldn’t keep still long enough because she kept throwing up.

Within hours, Reyes and her husband went to the ER a fifth time, where an ultrasound revealed a tumor that had completely obstructed her transverse colon, the longest part of her large intestine, and made it difficult for her to keep food down. The next morning, she had emergency surgery to remove it.

At first, Reyes said, the surgeon told her not to worry about the tumor. He told her she was very young, and that colon cancer wasn’t as common in Hispanic populations and people under 60.

But a week later, she learned she had stage 3B colon cancer. “I was scared, but then relieved at the same time,” Reyes said. “For three months, I was suffering, and I didn’t know why.”

Worried about worrying her family

The original plan was to hide her diagnosis and treatment from her family, especially her four kids, ranging in ages from 4 to 16 at the time. The doctor said she would likely only need two or three rounds of chemotherapy. Reyes and her husband wanted to leave their children with her mother and say they were going on a long couple’s trip for about a month.

Once she met with her oncologist and learned that the cancer had grown through her muscular wall and into her lymph nodes, she learned she would need 12 rounds of chemotherapy — about six months of treatment. It would be impossible to keep a secret. “I just didn’t want anybody to suffer, like my children and my parents,” Reyes said.

Reyes experienced ide effects from the chemo, such as nausea, fatigue, and weight gain. “I was literally swollen,” she said. “It’s like they pumped air into me.”

All the while, she avoided looking up colon cancer or trying to research her prognosis online — something she said helped her maintain a “peace of mind” throughout treatment.

She now advocates for cancer awareness in Spanish-speaking communities

As of October 2026, Reyes has been cancer-free for over a decade. She says she continues to receive annual follow-ups, including colonoscopies, blood work, and CT scans.

Some of her treatment side effects haven’t gone away. “The neuropathy in my feet, arms, fingers — it just feels like needles poking them,” she said.

After she was diagnosed, she urged her brother, who was 42 and a few years below the recommended screening age of 45, to get a colonoscopy. After some resistance, he agreed — and learned he had colon cancer as well. After surgery to remove his tumor, he’s been cancer-free for 4 years, she said.

Looking back, Reyes said she had wanted more guidance from other people who had colon cancer. She remembered posting about her experience on social media, but “nobody ever reached out to me and said, ‘Hey, I’m an advocate for colon cancer. I’m here,'” she said. “I wish I would’ve had that.”

Reyes is now involved with the Colorectal Cancer Alliance’s Never Too Young Taskforce, as well as a few other groups. She also tries to focus on helping the Spanish-speaking community. “There are so many people that come out to us, me and my husband, and they’re like, ‘Thank y’all for doing this,'” she said.