Completely off-topic, but it’s important. I’m off to have a colonoscopy this morning.
I’m 66 years old and I my first colonic polyp was found when I was 35. I was lucky enough to have an examination by a doctor who was working with Olympus on developing a device called a fiber-optic endoscope – an early version of the devices used today. The polyp was biopsied as precancerous and if I had not undertaken that procedure, I’m told, I would not be writing this today.
Since then I’ve had a colonoscopy on a regular basis and precancerous colonic polyps have shown up frequently. My life continues thanks to this procedure.
Why do I mention this? Well, I had two friends, one of each sex, who died of colonic cancer. In both cases they told me that the worst thing about their impending death was that it was all their own fault. They never had an endoscopy because they didn’t want to undergo such a “yucky” procedure.
As I would like to keep our readership and not have it die off, if you haven’t had a endoscopy please talk to your doctor about it. It saved my life. Will it save yours?
Update: just got back from the procedure. They found and removed 6 polyps. Going back again in 2 years.
Thank you for sharing this encouragement to go get screened. Let me extend it to mammograms, too…I’m 1 year out from a breast cancer diagnosis. I’m so thankful it was caught when it was.
Update: Just returned from the procedure. The doctor found and removed 6 polyps. Awaiting the biopsy, but he said they looked OK.
I agree fully. Whatever the result, colonoscopies bring good news. If they come back negative, as mine did last year, that’s one less thing to fret about. If they come back positive, as Paul’s often do, then usually the polyp is caught in time.
Your most important post ever. It will save at least one life. I should repost it in bookofjoe. In fact, I’m going to do just that: it will appear there at 12:01 p.m. today.
Between that forum and automatic crossposting to my 1,200+ Twitter followers and 150 Facebook friends, maybe it’ll go viral and save many lives.
Cheap at twice the price, as I like to say in another context entirely.
Don’t get too enthusiastic about this procedure as it is far riskier than some people would like you to know.
In studies carried out between 1966 and 2001
•Perforation occurred in about 1/3,450 to 1/139 colonoscopies.
•Heavy bleeding occurred in about 1/500 to 1/37 colonoscopies.
•Death occurred in about 1/30,000 to 1/3,000 colonoscopies.
Fair enough, Rusty. But I’d bet you the numbers for 2002-2012 are MUCH better. Consider, for one thing, that colonoscopy in its current iteration (using a flexible scope) only became mainstream in the 1990s. It’s likely the morbidity/mortality numbers from 1966-early 1990s are much higher than from then to 2001.
Had one yesterday as a matter of fact!
And I asked about perforations. Anyone with a normal bowel doesn’t have to worry. The perforations occur when the bowel is abnormal or a history of bowel disease such as Crohns, etc. Better to have the procedure than not to.
Well done! I was a hospice nurse for nine years (eventually driven out by the escalating paperwork) and many of my patients died of colon cancers that could have been easily treated if the patient had had a colonoscopy.
The procedure is not that bad. Especially since you’re pretty well stoned from the sedation they use. The prep with laxatives is far more bother than the procedure itself. While some anti-cancer screenings are coming under severe question (eg. PSA levels, and mammograms) everyone agrees that colonoscopies are useful and have a great reward/risk ratio.
Besides all that, they normally use a big monitor that you can see, so you have a real-time movie featuring your very own innards to watch.
There’s various rules of thumb for when to start and how often; if there’s family history or other risk factors, like with me, they start earlier and do it every five years instead of ten. And presumably if they find actual pre-cancer growths, even more often.
Going in next week. Like you, I’m a kind of polyp machine so I go in every two years or so. I consider a few days on a liquid diet followed by a night of “prep” or two years to be a tiny price to pay in exchange for making sure that I’m around to love and take care of my family. In fact, I find the experience, if not exactly pleasant, no big deal.
In 2008 I had my first and I swore it would be my last since it was clean. Then I was diagnosed with endometrial cancer. Fortunately it was caught early and I’m totally cancer free. I’m due for my next colonoscopy in Dec. 2013, and you can be sure it will be my Christmas present to myself. So glad your results were good, Paul.