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Tag: colon cancer
Runner Didn’t Let Cancer Diagnosis Beat Him In His Race To Survive

Runner Didn’t Let Cancer Diagnosis Beat Him In His Race To Survive

By Natalie Pompilio, The Philadelphia Inquirer (TNS)

PHILADELPHIA _ When doctors diagnosed Michael Ross with stage IV colon cancer last September, he didn’t ask them to forecast his future. The 44-year-old triathlete was focused on living, not dying.

So a few months after the disease was identified, Ross ran the Rothman Institute’s 8K race in the city as he has done for years. Because the event fell on one of his treatment weekends, his wife disconnected and flushed his chemotherapy line, bought him hand warmers and thermal socks, and sent him on his way. Dozens of friends surrounded him during the length of the run, all of them wearing blue shirts with a large yellow semicolon on the front.

Get it? A semicolon, like what Ross had left after surgery to remove the diseased portion. A semicolon, to represent a pause in life, not an end.

That positive attitude _ and a healthy dose of humor _ made all the difference, Wendy Ross believes. It’s fitting, she said, that her husband is a sports-medicine doctor at Rothman, a medical facility focused on orthopedics, where he founded and directs the Performance Lab, an exercise center that helps athletes improve their performance.

“At work, he helps people reach their potential, and here he was outside of work serving as a positive example for us all,” she said. “A lot of people who would have gotten that diagnosis would have given up. He never did.”

I met Wendy around this time last year when I wrote about Autism Inclusion Resources, the nonprofit she founded to help children on the spectrum prepare for new experiences that might unsettle them, like being on an airplane or sitting through a sporting event. She was one of CNN’s 10 “Heroes” of 2014, an honor awarded to ordinary people doing extraordinary work to help others.

When Wendy and I first talked, Michael was just a few months into his nine-month chemotherapy regimen. She was juggling the stress of his illness with the struggle to find continued funding for her organization and more typical life issues: holding down a job, raising sons Ben and Jacob, maintaining a home. Still, she made it clear that she did not want me to mention any of her personal challenges in that piece. She wanted the focus to be on helping autistic children and their families.

I thought she was extraordinary then. Now I know she’s part of an extraordinary family.

Michael is now cancer-free, extraordinary as those diagnosed with his rare form of colon cancer have a survival rate of 6 percent. Ben, 12, will be bar mitzvahed next year and, instead of a big party, he told his parents to donate the money they would have spent on that to an organization that helps families dealing with a cancer diagnosis, “so no one has to have a year like we did.”

“You can have a party that’s only going to last a few hours, or you could change someone’s life,” Ben told me when he occasionally looked up from his iPad when I visited the family’s home.

As part of his bar mitzvah preparation, Ben is selling semicolon T-shirts to raise money for charity. (For more details, visit: www.mylocker.net)

With prior shirt sales, Ben’s current hawking, and the unused party money, Wendy expects they’ll donate about $10,000.

“No one wants to be diagnosed with cancer, but when you are, hopefully, it doesn’t have to be the end of the story,” Michael said. Added Wendy, “It’s not really about focusing on the possibility of dying. It’s about living as much as you can while you’re here.”

(c)2015 The Philadelphia Inquirer. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC

Photo: newsworks

 

An Alternative To The Colonoscopy — Though It Has Its Own ‘Ick’ Factor

An Alternative To The Colonoscopy — Though It Has Its Own ‘Ick’ Factor

By Jeremy Olson, Star Tribune (Minneapolis)

MINNEAPOLIS — A new test that requires people to send stool samples in the mail for laboratory analysis is proving nearly as reliable as a colonoscopy in identifying potentially fatal colon cancers.

The DNA screening test, invented at the Mayo Clinic, could become an alternative to the colonoscopy — or at least an option for the millions of Americans who ignore their doctors’ recommendations because they are squeamish about the rectal exam or concerned about its cost, said Dr. David Ahlquist, a Mayo gastroenterologist and co-inventor of the “Cologuard” system.

The test was 92 percent accurate at identifying patients with colon cancer and 69 percent accurate at identifying patients with the kinds of bowel lesions or polyps that indicate a high risk for cancer, according to clinical trial results published Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine.

“Time will tell,” Ahlquist said. “It’s our hope that many individuals who are not being screened because of their reticence to undergo colonoscopy will choose to undergo screening with a noninvasive option like this.”

Regular screening for colon cancer is recommended at age 50 — earlier for people with family histories or greater risks — and was credited in a report Monday by the American Cancer Society for a decline over the past decade in the U.S. rate of colon cancer mortality.

But the lack of uptake is also why colon cancer remains the third-leading cause of cancer mortality, and contributes to 50,000 deaths in the nation each year.

The DNA test comes with its own “eww!” factor, in that people would need to fish out their own stool samples and package them to send in for testing. But market research by the test kit manufacturer, Exact Sciences of Madison, Wisconsin, indicates that people aren’t bothered as long as the test is effective and covered by health insurance. Surveys showed only 3 percent of people being put off by having to collect a stool sample.

“Our kit comes in its own sturdy box … and the patient also uses it to return the sample to the lab,” said Exact Sciences spokeswoman Cara Tucker. Test results would be sent to doctors in about two weeks.

The findings published Wednesday come from a company-funded clinical trial of 10,023 people who were at normal risk for colon cancer. They come about two weeks before a U.S. Food and Drug Administration committee is scheduled to decide whether the test is safe and effective for clinical use. In an unusual step, the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services are reviewing the test before the FDA review is complete — an indication that the federal agency might expedite Medicare coverage of the test for the nation’s elderly population.
Federal approval could mean the Cologuard test would be available as early as midsummer.

The study was a head-to-head comparison with an existing test called FIT, which detects cancer by finding hidden blood in stools, and showed that the new DNA screening found more cancers and cancer risks.

Cologuard works because tumors and polyps in the colon “shed” cells that are detectable in human waste, Ahlquist explained. However, the DNA test resulted in some false positives — about one in 10 tests suggested patients had colon cancer or an imminent risk for it, when they didn’t.

In clinical care, patients with positive results from Cologuard would undergo colonoscopies to confirm the results, said Dr. Thomas Imperiale, an Indiana gastroenterologist who was lead author of the study.

False positives do cause stress and anxiety, he said, but in the end they would direct patients to receive colonoscopies that they would have likely received anyway if the DNA test didn’t exist.

The rate of false negatives was low, and would likely be overcome if patients repeated the test over time, he said. Whether the test would be recommended annually, or less frequently, is unclear. The cost remains unclear as well, though it would presumably be cheaper than a colonoscopy that requires a visit to a specialty clinic or hospital.

Dr. Cathleen Clouse, a HealthEast family practice doctor in Maplewood, Minn., said she would welcome a new alternative for the many patients who are uneasy about colonoscopies or dislike the voluminous fluids they must consume in advance to clean out their bowels.

Two of her patients were referred to specialty clinics for colonoscopies and suffered the rare complication of having their bowels perforated.

“Given the alternative, I think people are going to choose the DNA test,” she said. “You’d be surprised what people are willing to do because they don’t want the colonoscopy.”

Photo: LTD Team via Flickr

Don’t Put Off Screening For Colon Cancer

Don’t Put Off Screening For Colon Cancer

My father has been dead for 30 years, and I miss him still. I wish he were here to tend his roses, to hug his grandchildren, to walk me down the aisle for my second marriage. I wish he and my mother had been able to enjoy a cozy retirement together.

He died when he was younger than I am today — a seemingly healthy and vigorous middle-aged man who did everything he knew to remain well. He quit smoking in his 30s; he exercised faithfully; he got his annual checkup. And the fact that his death was probably preventable makes it all the more tragic.

My dad died for want of a simple diagnostic test: a colonoscopy, the gold standard for detecting colon cancer. But back in the 1980s, medical science didn’t broadly disseminate news of its importance. Colon cancer, unlike most types, is largely curable when detected early, according to the American Cancer Association.

March is National Colorectal Cancer Awareness Month, and every year I do what I can to make sure families don’t endure the awful grief that haunts my family still. So here’s what you need to know: If you are 50 or older and you’ve never had one, get a colonoscopy. (If you have a family history of the disease, you may need to start your screenings sooner.) Make sure your spouse gets one. Make sure your parents do.

Writing in Slate, physician Rebecca Moss recently lamented the fact that so few Americans get screened for colon cancer when it’s recommended. “Your first act in prevention should be to get a colonoscopy when your doctor tells you to; the procedure can find tumors and pre-cancerous polyps before they become deadly. The other best prevention for colorectal cancer is exercise.

“Unfortunately, most Americans don’t follow this advice,” wrote Moss, who specializes in gastrointestinal cancers, noting that only about a quarter of people get a colon cancer screening when it’s recommended. However, she said, more than half of Americans take nutritional supplements, which don’t do a thing to ward off cancer.

Why don’t more people follow the straightforward recommendation for a screening test? It’s easy to put off, heaven knows. The colonoscopy (it’s not the only screening method, but, again, it’s the gold standard) requires a bit of preparation that can easily take a day out of your schedule. The procedure itself may not take an hour, but it will still probably require a day from your calendar given the sedatives you’ll take. However, that’s nothing compared to the years that colon cancer can take off your life.

Time, though, is just one factor. Cancers of the colon and rectal area produce squeamishness in many of us, such that we don’t want to even think about it. While women may talk readily about their mammograms or their struggles with breast cancer — and men are less reluctant to discuss prostate cancer these days — colorectal cancer remains an unmentionable.

Once upon a time, breast cancer — indeed, most cancers — was treated in the same way. That was true until a few brave women with high visibility, including the late Betty Ford, who had just become first lady when she underwent a mastectomy in 1974, stepped out to share their experiences as breast cancer patients. Since then, a massive industry has grown up to fund research, expand awareness and urge women to get screened.

Similarly, public awareness campaigns have sprung up around prostate cancer, which is the most common cancer in men. Advocacy groups, churches and medical organizations have joined forces to educate men about the need for screenings and to make them convenient and accessible.

So far, colorectal cancer has attracted fewer PR campaigns, advocacy groups or general awareness. There are few celebrities who step forward to do what TV journalist Katie Couric did in 2000 and comedian Steve Harvey did in 2009: have their colonoscopies tastefully televised. That awareness needs to expand; colorectal cancer vies with breast cancer to be the second-leading cause of cancer deaths.

So please consider this your personal awareness campaign. Get your colonoscopy. I wish my dad had had one in time.

(Cynthia Tucker, winner of the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for commentary, is a visiting professor at the University of Georgia. She can be reached at cynthia@cynthiatucker.com.)

Photo: Maggie Osterburg via Flickr