• Naiké Vorbe, 42, experienced abdominal pain for years and went on multiple diets.
• At 31, she learned she had a genetic predisposition for colon cancer and was diagnosed at stage 3B.
• After learning about the genetic risks, Vorbe's mom was diagnosed early with stage 1 uterine cancer.

For years, Naiké Vorbe tried to ease her abdominal pain. A dietitian advised her to cut gluten and lactose, but nothing worked.

Stomach discomfort wasn't new for her: throughout most of her adult life, she cycled from being constipated to having diarrhea. "I was constantly one or the other," Vorbe, 42, told Business Insider. When she was pregnant with her second child, she saw a gynecologist. Her bowel movements were explained away as common pregnancy symptoms.

Then the pain intensified. After she gave birth to her daughter, "going to the bathroom was more excruciating for me than giving birth," Vorbe said. She kept touching her stomach, knowing that something was wrong. Lying down, she felt a lump.

Shortly after, Vorbe, who lived in Haiti, booked an appointment with a GI. He immediately told her to fly to Miami from Haiti and see a specialist for colon cancer at the Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center at the University of Miami.

At 31, two months after giving birth, Vorbe was diagnosed with stage 3B colon cancer.

Fighting for her fertility

In 2014, a few weeks after her colonoscopy revealed a malignant tumor, Vorbe underwent surgery to get part of her colon removed. Months later, the cancer spread to her liver.

Vorbe had no idea what her immediate future would look like. She had a six-year-old daughter and a newborn back in Haiti, along with the rest of her family. Her then-fiancé (now husband), a film director, was traveling a lot for his first movie.

She said she asked her doctor to end her chemotherapy appointments on Thursdays, so she could fly back to Haiti on Friday and stay through Monday to be with her older daughter for the next 10 days. Then, she'd repeat the process.

Zooming out even more, she was concerned about how chemotherapy would affect her fertility. She wanted more kids, so she asked her doctor if she'd be able to have children after treatment.

She said he told her that saving her life was the priority. "But for my life to be worth it, I need the answer to this," Vorbe told him.

He connected her to a gynecologist who administered a gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH) every month, which temporarily suppressed ovary function and reduced the risk of chemotherapy-induced infertility.

Vorbe described him as a "big angel" in her life. "Every ball I threw at him, he worked with me," she said.

She did 12 rounds of chemotherapy. After her 4th, she was scheduled to have part of her liver removed. She took a break from chemo for a few weeks to recover, marrying her husband back in Haiti. When she returned, the tumor on her liver was gone. The part was still removed out of caution, but when it was dissected, no traces of cancer could be found.

Vorbe wanted to quit chemotherapy earlier, now that the tumors were gone. Her doctor insisted on 12 cycles, to give her the best chance of long-term survival. Dr. Daniel Sussman, Vorbe's physician and a gastroenterologist at the University of Miami Health System, told BI that in 2014, when Vorbe was treated, 12 cycles of chemo was "probably considered what was necessary" to increase the likelihood of successful treatment.

An underlying genetic risk

As a child, Vorbe remembers having unexplained stomach pain. Her father would take her to the doctor to be tested for worms and parasites. When she developed the lump in her abdomen as an adult, a gynecologist initially told her to try an enema.

"I was overlooked and pushed to the side because I was so young, I looked healthy," she said.

Additionally, she said discussions around bowel movements are taboo in Haitian culture. "You don't really speak about gastrointestinal issues."

When she was diagnosed with colon cancer, she took a recommended gene panel and learned she had Lynch syndrome, a symptomless genetic condition that raises the risk of developing colon cancer. She wondered if her grandmother, who died at 48, had it, too. "Nobody ever understood that's what happened to her," Vorbe said.

Sussman, who specializes in Lynch syndrome and was involved in diagnosing Vorbe, said that because the field of genetics is so young, entire families may have unknown genetic predispositions for certain cancers. Naiké "ended up being that first person in the family to undergo that genetic evaluation," he said.

Her mom was diagnosed with uterine cancer earlier

Vorbe, now a mom of five, has been in remission for 10 years. As a former colon cancer patient, she gets the recommended yearly colonoscopies. She also gets an endoscopy every two years, as Lynch syndrome puts her at risk of developing other cancers.

She said learning about Lynch syndrome not only helped her understand her diagnosis better. It also helped her mom, who carries the same genetic risk, to get diagnosed with uterine cancer early.

Her mother had a polyp in her uterus that was left alone because it hadn't grown over the years. When she told her gynecologist that Vorbe had Lynch syndrome and was being treated for colon cancer, her doctor immediately scheduled a biopsy. Vorbe's mother was diagnosed with stage 1 uterine cancer and had her uterus removed.

Vorbe said her family is what kept her going through treatments. She remembers thinking "There's no way I can die: I have these two beautiful little girls right in front of me. I want to see them grow up."

Despite being over a two-hour flight away, her family buoyed her throughout her recovery. Her godmother flew with her to her first chemo appointment. Her cousins flew to Miami to be in the house after the appointment, to cheer her up. In Haiti, her sister-in-law would care for Vorbe's baby overnight, then bring her to Vorbe in the morning.

"I had so much love and light around me, it just carried me," Vorbe said.

• Even Jamie Oliver can't keep his kids from eating pizzas and burgers in their teens.
• Despite teaching them to cook, Oliver's kids still go through a junk-food phase, he said.
• Thankfully, "they do come back," the celebrity chef said.

Even Jamie Oliver has a hard time steering his kids away from eating unhealthy food.

During an interview with People published on Monday, the celebrity chef spoke about his family life and what it's like being a father of five.

"All of my kids have got a confidence with cooking. I've taught all of my kids how to cook: planting things, growing things, picking things, coming to the market, getting to know everyone in the market, having conversations with people, realizing that naturally food is a delicious thing," Oliver told People.

Even though he has instilled in his kids a genuine appreciation for food, that hasn't kept them from entering a junk-food phase in their teens.

"When they start getting into 12, 13 years old, they start to go down the generic of all the predictable pizza, burger stuff — but they do come back," he said.

Throughout his career, Oliver has been a prominent advocate for healthy eating.

The "Naked Chef" star has also led several public campaigns advocating against junk food consumption among kids.

In his ABC series "Food Revolution," which aired from 2010 to 2011, Oliver drew national attention to "pink slime" — ground meat scraps treated with ammonia, which are often used by fast-food meat patties in the US. The show caused public outrage, leading several fast-food chains, including McDonald's, to announce that they would discontinue the use of the meat product in their burgers.

In 2018, he also launched a social media campaign against junk food advertising aimed at kids, calling for the government to introduce a 9 p.m. watershed on junk food ads on TV, and for controls on what kids see online and in public. As of 2024, nine UK mayors have backed Oliver's campaign and pledged to stop junk food advertising in public spaces.

However, in a 2018 interview with the Daily Mail, Oliver said that he would allow his kids to go to McDonald's if they wanted to.

"Honestly? If they wanted to go, I'd let them. Because they get really well fed 95% of the time from us," Oliver told the Daily Mail. "If they want to go out and have a fizzy drink I don't care, because we have none in the house. My wife's probably stricter. She'd say, 'Oh please, don't.' But they'd only end up doing it in some other place."

A CDC report based on data from the most recent National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey found that children and adolescents in the US consumed an average of 13.8% of their calories from fast food between 2015 and 2018. The previous figure, from 2011 to 2012, was 12.4%.

A representative for Oliver did not immediately respond to a request for comment sent by Business Insider.

• John Oliver returned to "The Daily Show" to mock America's shift to its "monarchy era."
• Oliver crashed the host Jon Stewart's monologue and said he was there to gloat.
• Oliver told Stewart to embrace being a monarchy because "kings get shit done."

John Oliver surprised audiences by returning to "The Daily Show" on Monday to interrupt Jon Stewart's monologue and gloat about ushering America into a new era.

Stewart's monologue briefly addressed the Super Bowl but primarily focused on jokes about President Donald Trump's recent executive orders, like renaming the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America, and his saying that America was at its greatest from 1870 to 1913.

"Well, it's been a good run, America," Stewart said about 16 minutes into the monologue. "It's looking like we're becoming less like the constitutional republic it's been for 250 years and more like the monarchy that we all fought to escape from."

Oliver then appeared onscreen as the audience burst into applause.

"The prodigal son appears to have returned," Oliver said.

Oliver was a senior correspondent on the show from 2006 to 2013. He then landed his own series, "Last Week Tonight With John Oliver," which airs on HBO.

When Stewart asked Oliver if he was here to offer his "wisdom and counsel," Oliver clarified: "Oh, no, no, Jon. I'm here to gloat."

"America had its little fun, didn't you?" he continued. "Experimenting with democracy. You fought so hard to get away from us, acting up, throwing all that tea into the harbor — you still owe us for that, by the way."

Oliver teased America for diverging from British rule and vowing to not be like Britain.

"We let you spend your wild teen years experimenting with your ridiculous ideas of checks and balances because deep down we knew that once you got that nonsense out of your system, you'd be back," Oliver said.

"Let me be the first to welcome America to its monarchy era," he added.

In response, Stewart said America was "having a bit of trouble with democratic governance," but not to the point of wanting to "go full empire."

"Don't fight being a monarchy, Jon. Embrace it!" Oliver said. "Kings get shit done."

Stewart retorted that Britain hadn't turned out much better than America.

"For a country that doesn't want to be an empire, you're doing a pretty fucking good impression of one right now," Oliver said, citing "invasions" and "economic exploitations."

"We really have become our father," Stewart conceded.