Treat cancer early

Letters

Editor: On the day of American Thanksgiving 2003, my beloved "baby" sister, Theresa Goodlife (59 years old), succumbed to cancer. She first showed symptoms in the summer of 2000, was diagnosed as having colon cancer and underwent immediate surgery followed by chemotheraphy. But it was all too late.

Colon cancer is an especially insidious disease. In its earliest stages, when it is almost always curable, it presents no symptoms. By the time symptoms do occur, it is often too late – as in Theresa's case – to effect a cure. After lung cancer, colon cancer is the second highest cancer killer.

Urge everyone you know and value who is over 50 - yourself, your spouse, your parents, your children, your aunts and uncles and cousins, nephews and nieces, and friends – to arrange for a colorectal exam.

To be sure, a colonoscopy is mildly uncomfortable and, for many persons, more than a little embarrassing. In Vancouver, the Cancer Society has run commercials on television counselling everyone over 50 to have a colorectal exam. The commercial shows the bare backside of a person and, when the voice-over says, "Don't die of embarrassment," the buttocks, the "other" set of one's cheeks, blush red.

Please regard this short note as a needed "kick in the butt." It may turn out to be infinitely preferable to the alternative of cancer in that region.

The greatest gift you can make in memory of my dear sister is to prevent your, and your loved ones, dying a needless, gruesome death from colon cancer. This cancer is readily detectable and treatable in its early stages.

Norman Swartz
Burnaby

^TOP