- Joined
- Apr 2, 2006
- Messages
- 11,259
This is a good PSA to be pro-active in that area. My MIL use to bring it up at the dinner table. "Have you had a colonoscopy lately"? And she could never remember anyone's answer from one dinner to the next (we're talking Easter, Thanksgiving, Xmas etc) so she would ask at every big meal!
When my doctor gave me the results of my last colonoscopy - thankfully, negative - he cheerfully added I wouldn't have to have another one for ten years. I had assumed that I would be on a 5-year schedule because my mother had recently died of colon cancer. But he told me that I was not considered to be at high risk for colon cancer because she of my mother's age - 85 - when she died.
Needless to say that didn't particularly comfort me. I don't like colonoscopies any more than anyone else, but I'll be lobbying for another one when I get close to the 5-year mark. On the doctor's proposed schedule, there will only be one procedure between now and when I reach the age at which the cancer was discovered in my mother...