Risks

Risks

A good friend, who is in his 60s, is now undergoing chemotherapy, after three surgeries for colon cancer. Here in Idaho, public service radio ads keep emphasizing the importance of getting regular colonoscopies after you turn 50. On the other hand, a friend from church had a colonoscopy a while back--and suffered from irritable bowel syndrome for more than a year afterwards.

So I did some research. The procedure is quite a bit less pleasant than I thought. I was expecting, "Hmmm. K-Y jelly on a fiber optics probe. How bad could that be?" Well, it's a bit worse than that. Laxatives before hand. Enema to clean out the lower GI tract. You are sedated to a level where I suspect that I will fall alseep. Along with the fiber optics bundle to look around, there's a little gadget for grabbing and removing any polyps that they see. And there's some risk involved--not much, but enough that I can't imagine it becoming popular in the Castro District. (Wait, let me rethink that. Maybe it is!) I was beginning to wonder if this was really necessary, since there's no history of colon cancer in my family.

Then I went to talk to my doctor. He tells me that family history really isn't all that useful a predictor of colon cancer. He also tells me that while about 1 in 10,000 colonoscopies have significant complications (colon puncture, for example), it is still lower risk than not getting a colonoscopy, because of the high mortality of colon cancer. As unpleasant as a colonoscopy sounds, why my friend battling with colon cancer is experiencing sounds substantially worse.

There are relatively few completely risk free activities in life. Almost everything involves some tradeoffs between risk and benefit. But just in case I have post-colonoscopy IBS, I think I will have this done after I get back from my Grand Canyon vacation in June.

UPDATE: Several readers have been through this procedure (unsurprisingly). One indicated that the "sedation" knocked him completely out. Another said it was done with gas anesthetic. Neither found anything painful about it (although the laxatives beforehand were another matter). My mother also tells me that my maternal grandmother had colon cancer, so all the more reason to bite the bullet.