Posted on 02/16/2010 10:35:56 AM PST by metmom
WASHINGTON — Nearly half the people who need potentially lifesaving checks for the nation’s second-highest cause of cancer deaths - colorectal cancer - miss them, despite years of public efforts to make colon screening as widespread as tests for breast and prostate cancer. The dreaded colonoscopy may get the most attention but a cheap, at-home stool test works, too - and when California health care provider Kaiser Permanente started mailing those test kits to patients due for a colon check, its screening rates jumped well above the national average.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
For those who haven’t had it done, colonoscopy is much easier than it was even 5 years ago.
Most facilities knock you out which eliminates the fear factor.
The prep was more of an issue than the actual proceedure.
My test was 1000 but perhaps thats Oregon.
Skip it if you want to risk early cancer not being caught. After 60 and by the time you reach 80 you will very likely have colon cancer. The non-invasive tests are nowhere near as reliable.
The feared poke and prod is not that bad and the worst part is taking the nasty laxative juice before. The procedure was painless, I was awake for most of it and there was no pain or after effects other than an incredible desire for a four course meal. I’m now considered good for another 10 years.
Is this the stuff?
I am scheduled to have another one sometime in Oct. - Nov. time frame. I am dreading the day before. Last time I could not keep the last glass of the prep solutiong down! Nasty stuff!
Hunger is not a disease. Deal with it.
Have not had one yet, but it seems like you could wind down your food intake over a couple days ahead of time to keep it from being so bad. Eat high fiber for a couple days, then the clear liquid day?
“The only reason it is dreaded is the day before the procedure!”
I had my 50,000 mile check up in November. The check up itself is nothing. You don't even know it happened. Its the sani-flush you have to drink the day before that is the bad part. Does leave you feeling clean as a whistle for several days afterward though.
The stuff I took the last time, Fleet Phospho Soda, appears to have some class action lawsuit against it. I woke up with the TV on one night and heard one of those ambulance-chaser lawyer ads on. That stuff was nasty, but you only had to drink like 3 ozs of it.
They told my loved one, afterwards, of course, that he could use crystal light or something like that in the stuff for better taste. Also that they don’t really expect you to take ALL of the solution.
Most private insurance do not cover “screening” colonoscopies. They will only cover IF you have a reason blood in stool, change in bowel habits etc. The stool quiac cards are a poor screen. May only pick up 15-20% and likely to be more advanced. But, if it is positive your colonoscopy is now diagnostic and covered not a screening exam. Now before you get bent out of shape just think how much insurance rates would have to increase to pay for everyone to have a screening colonoscopy. Cost here is about 3,800 nothing like a 120.00 mammogram.
Do you work in Tulsa by chance??
You do remember you can have all the clear liquids you want. Beer worked for me and made it fun.
I found some advice on the net:
Pretend that you hold in your hand the only antidote to the lethal virus that has been introduced by some foreign monkey into our country. You will die if you do not drink this glass within 10 seconds every 10 minutes. You may not stop, and you may not lose it into the kitchen sink. It is your only hope.
They still have it, my dad did it just last week. It is an expensive procedure, and if they find anything, they have to go in anyway. They may reserve it for looking at portions of the bowel that cannot be reached by colonoscopy (which was the part they needed to examine in my father).
No I am in Mississippi. Yes to the beer!
Yeah, I really got a chuckle out of it. Having gone through the proceedure just a couple of months before - I could really 'relate'.
Luckily I’m still young enough that I don’t have to worry about this sort of thing for a long time. I remember a few years ago my dad had to have one and they sent him home with a 30 count of some pain pills. After that, I’m not too keen on the procedure.
One thing this shows is that people want to make their own decisions about health care. They have their own reasons for what they will and will not subject themselves to. They will lose that freedom if the government takes over.
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