About a month ago, Caden and Bailey Hutchins took a trip to Gatlinburg, Tennessee. As they started a hike, they came across the Rainbow Falls trail and decided to tackle it. At the time, they were unaware of what they started — a difficult six-hour round-trip trek with spotty cell phone service.
“We had no clue what we were up against, and it turns out we ended up hiking this trail all day long, and it was full incline, all uphill, up a mountain,” Caden Hutchins, 28, of Bradenton, Florida, tells TODAY.com. “It was so incredible to see. We were all just so defeated from this, and nobody could say anything because Bailey kept going. She was so ambitious.”
Bailey Hutchins, 26, had spent the past two years undergoing treatment for colorectal cancer. While she experienced “pains here and there” on the hike, she continued on, undaunted. To Caden Hutchins, this moment shows who his wife was.
“I feel like that was like her little Bailey and Goliath moment, and she was claiming victory,” he says. “It was a special moment that we didn’t realize how special it was during the time. But I think about it a lot now.”
On Feb. 7, 2025, Bailey Hutchins passed away, which Caden Hutchins announced on their Instagram accounts and her TikTok, where she'd been updating her followers about her experience with colon cancer.
“She endured so much pain throughout her entire journey,” her husband recalls. “She never let it define her. She always was so positive and so vibrant.”
Stomach issues lead to surprising diagnosis
Caden and Bailey Hutchins started dating in 2013 and were “high school sweethearts,” he says. In 2022, Caden Hutchins asked Bailey Hutchins to marry him, and she said yes. A few months after their engagement, Bailey Hutchins experienced “severe stomach issues.”
“Constipation — she couldn’t go to the bathroom,” he says. “Just puking, she couldn’t stomach any food.”
Symptoms of colon cancer, the second-leading cause of cancer death in women under 50, include:
- Blood in stool
- A change in bowel habits
- Unexplained belly pain
- Unexpected weight loss
- Fatigue for no reason
After a few days, Caden Hutchins convinced his then-fiancée to visit the emergency room. Doctors ordered a CT scan and saw what they thought contributed to Bailey Hutchins distress.
“There was a mass in her intestine, and it was creating basically a blockage,” Caden Hutchins says. “That’s why she was unable to go to the bathroom. That’s why she was unable to stomach food.”
Doctors performed a colonoscopy to examine the mass, even though they didn’t think she had cancer initially. After biopsy results returned, though, they knew she had colon cancer.
“Everything happened so quickly from there,” he says. “She was getting rushed into an emergency surgery.”
At the end of January 2023, Bailey Hutchins, then 24, was diagnosed with Stage 3 colon cancer, which she posted about on social media.
“They ended up resecting the disease,” Caden Hutchins says. “She came out of that surgery, and we had discovered that she had pretty severe cancer. … I will never forget that moment that they doctor came into our room at the hospital, and he was just heartbroken when he gave us the news.”
Doctors removed her appendix, 52 lymph nodes and part of her colon, according to her Instagram post at the time.
“A majority of the tumor was removed however they couldn’t safely remove the entire tumor as it has attached to my spleen and pancreas,” she wrote.
After recovering from surgery, she started 12 rounds of chemotherapy.
Bailey Hutchins then dedicated her life to healthy habits that she hoped would bolster the results of the chemo. She eliminated ultraprocessed foods from her diet, started meditating and stretching, and the couple went on daily walks.
“There was one month we walked probably it was like 70 miles,” he says. “We’re just walking all the time because it was just so good. … There’s just so many other benefits like reducing depression and helping the body function a lot better.”
That also allowed the couple to have time alone to bond and “have really good conversations.”
“There are just so many good memories on our walks,” he says.
In November 2023, the couple married. At the time, it seemed as if Bailey Hutchins’ health was stable.
But a few months later, routine bloodwork indicated something was wrong, and follow-up tests revealed more masses, which had spread to her peritoneum, which lines the abdominal cavity, pelvis and some organs. Bailey Hutchins' cancer had progressed to Stage 4.
Doctors hoped that a HIPEC surgery — a procedure to remove as many tumors as possible and then pump warm chemotherapy drugs into the cavity, according to Johns Hopkins — could help.
She had to undergo six rounds of chemotherapy before the surgery. But when doctors began the surgery, they felt dismayed by what they discovered.
“They aborted it,” Caden Hutchins says. “There was too much spread of the disease for it to make sense. It would have done more harm than good.”
Yet Bailey Hutchins stayed positive.
“Throughout all of this, the amount of strength and courage she showed was just unbelievable,” Caden Hutchins says. “She was so beautiful. She was so motivated, a go-getter. She gave this fight her all.”
He believes she fought so hard because “she had so much to live for.”
“She was super young. We got freshly married. We were so in love with each other,” he says. “She was wanting to live so badly and create a life and have kids and live a full life of happiness.”
Following her unsuccessful surgery, Bailey Hutchins resumed chemotherapy. But her health continued to worsen, and in the last few months of her life she experienced frequent bowel obstructions due to tumors.
“Every couple of weeks we would be stuck in a hospital for another week,” Caden Hutchins explains. “She would keep getting bowel obstructions and they would usually happen in the middle of the night, and we’d have to drive an hour to the ER.”
‘Be an advocate for yourself’
After the trip to Gatlinburg, Bailey Hutchins health faltered even more.
“To the very end, she was fighting hard, and mentally she was tough,” Caden Hutchins says. “Physically, her body was breaking down a little bit. She was getting more exhausted.”
As always, Bailey Hutchins was thinking of others even when grappling with her own health.
“One thing about Bailey, she always put everybody before herself. She was such a selfless person,” he says. “One of the biggest things she said before she passed was, ‘I just worry so much about you guys.’ We had to reassure her that we would be OK.”
Bailey Hutchins felt passionate about helping others and raising awareness of colon cancer in young people, especially. Often, she felt touched by the messages she received on social media from people who said her story helped them.
“She always said, ‘Be an advocate for yourself. Nobody knows your body more than yourself. If a doctor isn’t addressing or acknowledging the issue that you’re having, then get a second opinion,’” Caden Hutchins recalls.
“That’s even how we treated her entire cancer journey. We would interview numerous doctors, and she would always be on phone calls with people … constantly educating herself.”
Bailey Hutchins also was passionate about raising awareness of colon cancer and encouraged people to visit their doctor if they had symptoms. Caden Hutchins hopes her legacy is one of raising awareness of colon cancer and the importance of early detection.
“No one expects to get colon cancer at such a young age,” Caden Hutchins says. “Her story could really continue to save lives.”
