Front and Center: Bryce Ramsey
Royal blue is Bryce Ramsey’s favorite color.
The registered nurse and category manager for strategic sourcing at the University of Mississippi Medical Center wore a royal blue evening gown when she was crowned Mrs. Mississippi Plus in 2024. Every time she wears that regal shade, it reminds her of the stage 3 colorectal cancer she defeated.
"Since my diagnosis, royal blue took over my wardrobe,” she said.
Ramsey, now cancer free for six years, had a platform of colorectal cancer awareness during her reign as Mrs. Mississippi Plus.
“It was a whirlwind,” she said of her year representing the state and sharing her story with news media around the country. “So crazy busy.”
Ramsey’s colorectal cancer journey began not long after giving birth to son Ashton in 2011 when she noticed blood in her stool but dismissed it as hemorrhoids. When the bleeding became more frequent in 2019, she underwent a colonoscopy, which revealed a 5-centimeter polyp in her sigmoid colon, the part of the colon that connects to the rectum.
Ramsey was 34 when she was diagnosed with adenocarcinoma of the sigmoid colon. Likely, the cancer had been growing since she was in her early 20s, she said.
Surgery removing 3 feet of her colon and 13 lymph nodes soon followed. Since the cancer had spread to three of those lymph nodes, her colon cancer was classified as stage 3.
Ten days after surgery, Ramsey was swept off on a birthday trip to New Orleans for a Saints game, where her now-husband Mickee proposed.
“He said, ‘I just want you to know I’m not proposing to you because you’re sick. I’ve been planning this for a long time,’” Ramsey said in an interview with the New York Post. “He was like, ‘It just threw a little hiccup in our plan.’”
The couple ended up on the jumbotron, and Saints linebacker Demario Davis retweeted footage of the special moment.
A few weeks later, in January 2020, Ramsey was balancing planning a wedding with undergoing chemotherapy treatments while Mickee, a paramedic, was sent to New York to help with ambulance services in the early days of the COVID pandemic.
The couple married in June 2020, and on Father’s Day that year, Ramsey discovered she was pregnant.
“During my cancer treatment, I had vivid dreams of having another son, always with the name Luke or Lucas,” she said. That dream became reality in February 2021 when, after battling a case of COVID, the Ramsey family welcomed Emree Lucas-Ray, who’s now 5.
Ramsey, who’s been an RN for 16 years, started her career on 3 North after earning an Associate Degree in Nursing from Hinds Community College. She then earned a BSN from the UMMC School of Nursing and became a charge nurse on 4 Wiser. After working in home health and in burn care, she returned to UMMC in her current role nearly four years ago and then earned an MSN from the School of Nursing.
“You know, they say it's like a magnet,” she said. “Once you become UMMC family, you always come back home.”
As a category manager in strategic sourcing, she works as a liaison between procedural and lab areas and vendors, helping to negotiate contracts and identify savings.
When Ramsey decided to enter the Mrs. Mississippi Plus competition, she was asked about her platform.
“I immediately knew it was going to be colorectal cancer awareness.”
Now cancer free for more than six years, Ramsey is still encouraging Mississippians to be screened for colon cancer.
Being aware of symptoms of colon cancer is important for those younger than 45, the age when colon cancer screenings such as colonoscopies are recommended, she said.
After her diagnosis, Ramsey found out “we do, in fact, have a significant family history,” Ramsey said, noting that several close relatives have had surgery after polyps were found. She and several family members have Lynch Syndrome, which increases the risk for colorectal cancer as well as uterine, ovarian and stomach cancers.
“In Mississippi, we don't know the prevalence of Lynch Syndrome, but affected families come to know about it after someone gets diagnosed with colorectal cancer at an early age,” said Dr. Manju George, assistant professor of population health science, a member of the UMMC Cancer Center and Research Institute outreach team and chair of the Mississippi Colorectal Cancer Roundtable. “This is why screening for colorectal cancer is very important. Once a patient is diagnosed with Lynch Syndrome, their immediate family needs to get tested and those positive will need to get screened for CRC and monitored for other cancers.”
New treatment options including immunotherapy are available for those with Lynch Syndrome, which has increased the cure rates of this subset of colorectal cancer dramatically, George said.
Mortality has decreased for every leading cancer-related death in people younger than 50 years in the US except colorectal cancer, which is now the leading cancer death in females and males combined, the Scientific American reports.
That’s prompted Ramsey to be an active part of the Mississippi Colorectal Cancer Roundtable, sharing her story with communities around the state and encouraging Mississippians to be aware of their family health histories and get screened for colorectal cancer.
Colonoscopies are the gold standard for colorectal cancer screening since polyps can be removed during the procedure, but other testing options are available.
George said Ramsey is a valued Mississippi Colorectal Cancer Roundtable colleague.
“Colorectal cancer survivor, Lynch Syndrome advocate, community connector – Bryce is the kind of partner who makes the Mississippi Colorectal Cancer Roundtable what it is.”