Colorectal Cancer is the one people don't talk about so much.
The colon and rectum involve body parts we deal with behind a closed bathroom door.
That attitude might kill you.
Colorectal cancer is on my mind because I had a colonoscopy procedure yesterday. I am fine. Once again they found a polyp somewhere up there and removed it. It is gone and won't turn cancerous and it won't kill me. I am feeling great about it.
Stock photo of colon with polyps
Colorectal cancer is the second leading cause of cancer deaths in Americans, behind lung cancer and just ahead of breast cancer. 150,000 Americans will be diagnosed with it this year. 50,000 Americans will die from it. Some people catch it early enough to get treated.
The good news is that death rates are dropping slowly. More people are being screened through colonoscopies which find and remove the cancerous or pre-cancerous polyps. Twice a year a physician looks at the moles on my back. I cannot see back there. If any look suspicious they can be removed. Once every five years a physician looks up my lower intestine to look for polyps. Apparently I am a polyp-maker.
People procrastinate on getting the screen. They would cost about $3,000 if paid for directly. Health insurance plans typically pay for it beginning at age 50 and then once every ten years. Medicare pays for it. If suspicious polyps are found the screening is more frequent. I am scheduled for every five years because I make polyps.
People procrastinate on the screening. It is a mildly unpleasant procedure in part of the body we don't talk about much. Let me de-mystify it.
1. Two days before the procedure avoid high fiber foods like granola and berries with seeds. No big deal.
2. The day before the procedure don't eat. You can drink coffee, clear protein drinks, and jello, but it is basically a day without food. It won't kill you.
3. Then, 12 hours before the procedure, take the prescription laxative pills they give you and drink lots of water. Then more water. Pretty soon you will be in the bathroom voiding everything left inside you.
4. Then, six hours before the procedure, you again do another dose of prescription laxative and water. You will be voiding essentially clear water.
5. Then you go to the Endoscopy center and people get you into an open-back gown, put in an IV probe, hook you up to a blood pressure and heart monitor machine, then tell you to lay on your side. They roll you into a procedure room, put some propofal sedative into the IV. They tell you to count down from 100. You will get to 97.
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7. About 30 minutes later you wake up back in the room where you got into the gown. Your rear end does not feel raw or like anything at all happened back there. You drink some coffee and the doctor comes in to tell you whether they found anything interesting. You get dressed and someone drives you home.
What about Number Six? Unbeknownst to you the doctor put a flexible thin tube with a light and snippers and examined three feet of lower intestine and did whatever was necessary. You felt nothing and remember nothing. Zero. Time didn't exist for you.
The whole two-day procedure is more trouble than a vaccination, and if you are feeling lucky, don't bother. Eventually you will die of something, and there is only a three to four percent chance it will be colorectal cancer. But it is preventable if you do your part.
You are far more likely to die of colorectal cancer than you are of COVID. You got vaccinated, didn't you?
I am a huge proponent of and regular participant in this procedure. My first one was back in the days when you had to drink a gallon of foul tasting stuff and I couldn't take the "conscious sedation" of the time so I experienced every excruciating minute. Everybody who turned 50 went through it and we had a fine time sharing stories at parties. Thanks for promoting Peter.
I take colorectal cancer screening seriously, but am wondering about your conclusion that one is "far more likely to die of colorectal cancer than COVID." That may be true for future years, but in the past two years I thought American deaths from COVID were running about 400,000/year. More than the 50,000 colorectal cancer deaths/year cited in this article? What am I missing?