Trina Gregory said doctors rushed into her room less than 30 minutes after her CT scan a month ago.
“We found a tumor in your colon,” they said.
she fell to the floor. She had come to the hospital for the same test a month earlier due to abdominal pain. Gregory admits he’s not cut out for the ER, but he finds it serious. They told her she had colitis and constipation and sent her home.
“‘Drink more water,’ they said.”
Now they were calling in a colorectal surgeon. I told her it might be cancer.
it was.
Gregory never left the hospital. The next day, they removed “Albert” (Gregory named the grapefruit-sized mass), along with 71 lymph nodes and most of his colon.
When the state erased the rainbow, Trina Gregory responded with a big, colorful idea
“They left me with 18 inches.”
she is grateful to them.
Gregory’s grandmother had colon cancer and required a colostomy. And while the road ahead will be filled with both chemotherapy and immunotherapy and a series of subsequent discomforts, Gregory’s colon, now smaller but stronger, is still functioning as it should.
She’s outspoken, but she says it didn’t come naturally.
“I may be out in the community a lot, but I’m actually a pretty private person. I have a lot to share, but it felt inauthentic if I didn’t. People know that I don’t go to[restaurants]that much, and when I’m there, I walk slowly.”
She also wants her story to serve as a message, which is one of the reasons she broke the news to people on Instagram earlier this week.
“I didn’t listen to my body,” she admits. “The idea of getting a colonoscopy is not a good idea, so we tend to put it off…But to be honest, this message is probably for other restaurant owners because we don’t take care of ourselves. We’re too busy taking care of everything else.”
Until his diagnosis, Gregory was doing pretty well despite the usual stressors. She was a finalist for the Sentinel’s recent Central Floridian of the Year award. She was one of the winners of Orlando Magazine’s Woman of the Year award. she found love. She and her boyfriend, Evan Coutts, got engaged in March.
“I’ve never been happier in my life,” she said, tearfully crouched over the cruelest aspect of this mess. “I’m really angry. It’s just one more thing to worry about when we’re already under so much stress and we want to make sure we keep our 22 employees employed.”
With that thought in mind, she left.
“And I don’t have a choice either. Everyone needs to be there because I can’t do it.”
Gregory, who has Lynch syndrome, has a pretty good prognosis. Although it is a genetic condition that increases the risk of developing certain cancers (“All the women in my mother’s family had ovarian cancer by the age of 45,” she says), Lynch’s tumors respond incredibly well to immunotherapy because the mutated proteins appear “foreign” to the body.
“That’s the lucky part of me,” she says, but chemotherapy will likely be as well.
But for small business owners who are used to working far more than overtime, the post-surgery chaos has proven to be tough.
“Everything hurts. It hurts to stand. It hurts to poop. It hurts to pee. Everything is healing inside. I was cut from hip to hip. Two days ago, I tried to empty the dishwasher and couldn’t even get out of bed after that.”
Although Gregory’s downtime is a little more than usual, she’s still awake enough — “Yesterday was too much. I’m taking it easy today” — and her time on the couch means time to do what she’s always done best: bring the community together.
Starting this week and running through the end of summer, Se7enbites will be hosting Blue Ribbon specials every day of the week. $1 from every meal sold goes directly to the Colorectal Cancer Alliance (colorectalcancer.org).
“They help fund colonoscopies for people who can’t afford them,” Gregory says.
In fact, it’s an important tool. Colorectal cancer is highly treatable if detected early.
“I want people to get tested. There’s no shame in it. No one wants to talk about their bowel movements and whether they have a problem or whether they’ve noticed they’ve lost a lot of weight.”
Gregory himself lost 40 pounds in five months. Many around her simply thought she was working on it.
“I should have paid more attention to that,” she admits.
Now, like journalist Katie Couric, whose 2000 Today Show colonoscopy sparked a 20 percent rise in testing rates nationwide known as the “Couric effect” — Couric’s husband lost his battle with colon cancer at just 42 years old — Gregory is rapidly gaining recognition, if only locally. She is also planning another Relay for Life later in the summer.
“It’s real,” she says. “It’s uncomfortable, but humanizing it can make a difference.”
Her work may be light, but her trademark sassy personality is as strong as ever as she embarks on this new community mission, complete with a statement that reflects the restaurant’s originality.
“Let me check out the other pie hole,” she says.
Find me on Facebook, TikTok, Twitter, Instagram @amydroo or the OSFoodie Instagram account @orlando.foodie. Email: amthompson@orlandosentinel.com, and for more foodie fun, join our Let’s Eat, Orlando Facebook group.
