At least three generations before me died of colon cancer. I went for my first colonoscopy a few weeks after my dad died and they found 23 polyps. I'm quote-unquote lucky, but I'm still going to be dodging this for the rest of my life, and I'm already exhausted. And I'm so angry it's like this.
(and I do tend to put "lucky" in heavy quotes, because Dad should have had his screenings, and no one should have had to die for me to get a doctor to stop telling me my symptoms were "just stress," but that's another rant. The whole thing's an emotional spike pit, though.)
My dad also died, just before 70. Never had a single colonoscopy. My siblings and I were told we didn’t need to start scopes early, but I was diagnosed just days after I turned 44. My son and my siblings’ kids must start scopes at 30.
Yeah, I was 39. Practically the first thing a nurse told me when I came up from sedation was, "It's a REALLY good thing you came in when you did." If I'd waited even a year or two, it assuredly would have been cancerous by then.
My oncologist estimated that I was stage 1 ~40. A colonoscopy even by 35 would have made a difference. I already had cancer before my dad died, but no symptoms. It’s too bad Cologuard didn’t yet exist. I’m glad you were caught before things got more serious. My brother had polyps identified in time.
Yeah, that tracks. And I keep hearing that people are getting it younger and younger on average. In my family it seems to either hit early or late; my dad's mom died in her 40s, and I was pretty much on her schedule, I think.
And we no longer can feel safe by exercising and eating right. I was doing things like running marathons and riding my bike 150 miles in a single day…while cancer was growing. A woman I know was a longtime vegan and diagnosed in her early 30s. Athletic teens are being diagnosed.
Exactly. I had a hilariously pointless meeting with a (well-meaning, let's be fair) nutritionist at SCCA / Fred Hutch who gave me generic "eat less red meat and more vegetables" advice, but that was all she had, because it was so screamingly obviously genetic. Diet won't make it go away.
My son’s diet is terrible…but he doesn’t have much incentive to eat better when he saw what I endured. I think in his mind if he has to start scopes in 6 years to fend off cancer, why not eat what he craves, now. I’m more worried about the other poor diet ailments that he could encounter, sadly.
I'm sorry you had to go through the ordeal you did, though. It's such a sneaky disease. :(