Re: Fwd: Fw: Yellow Ribbon

January 8, 2004

I missed the part about what color you were refering to for colon cancer - the

brown or the blue?

-Priscilla

Fwd: Fw: Yellow Ribbon

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>>> These are the traditional ribbons for all of us who are dealing with colon

>>> cancer.

Colorectal Cancer strikes 130,000 people each year. Many of

these people are in

their 30's and 40's with families. Most of these are caught in

the late stages and the patient had no symptoms until their cancer was

advanced and possibly

spreading to other areas. There is a very simple test (colonoscopy)

that can catch these cancers in their early stages. Unfortunately many Dr.s do

not recommend this test until a person is in his/her 50's. This was too late

for my husband who is 44 and has stage 4 colon cancer. He is on standard chemo

and is doing well. However, I believe that had he been tested earlier maybe we

could have caught this before it got so far. This is not a kind or pretty

disease and the fact that it is SO preventable should make us all want to take

action to prevent it.

When you get this say a prayer for everyone you know with colon cancer and if

you are over 30 and haven't had a colonoscopy yet get one ASAP. Insist on it!

Encourage your friends and the medical community to start testing at 30.

Earlier, I mentioned that 130,000 people are diagnosed with colorectal cancer

each year. Late stage cancer cost a MINIMUM of $100,000/year not including

time lost from work disability benefits, survivor benefits etc. A colonoscopy

by comparison cost a few hundred dollars and maybe a day off of work due to

the

prep involved.

One day of inconvenience and slight discomfort to save your life.

I urge you to take this advice and forward this to all your e-mail contacts

urging them to do the same. Other than prayer this is the best thing you can

do

for yourself and for all of us dealing with this disease.

Thanks so much

Narice

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January 8, 2004

Narice,

I know what you mean. CCNetwork is now promoting the most aggressive screening

plan out there. Screening needs to begin at 20 and be done every 5 years IF you

don't have any family history that indicates it should be done even more

frequently.

To bring home the point we run this simple math for folks we talk to:

130,000 are diagnosed each year.

Nearly all of those are at stage 3 and 4

Using a conservative estimate of $80,000 cost of treatment at stage 3 - multiply

that by the 130,000 diagnosed each year...

10.4 billion dollars are being spent on treatment every year.

For that same 10.4 billion we can screen 13 million people.

Now tell me, doesn't this sound like one of those " well, duh! " kind of things.

Let's screen starting at 20. Let's do it every 5 years. Lets stop fooling

around with screening at 50, hemmocults, FOBTs, flexible sigmoidoscopies etc.

Those guidelines haven't stopped the 56,000 deaths annually.

Why wait until someone needs surgery and chemo? Let's just skip this cancer

altogether by screening right in the first place.

This can happen. Without another research dollar spent on new screening

methods. But it will take an on the ground army of us working together with

basically the same message, making sure that the docs, the legislators, the

insurance companies, and our neighbors ALL hear this message.

We have a PSA that was just put together for us by a women in Atlanta whose 28

year old brother died in August just 6 weeks after his first child was born.

The entire focus of this PSA is that colon cancer happens at EVERY age. She did

an incredible job with this. But now we have to get it aired. We can try to

raise money to have a distribution service send it out - but that would still

not guarantee it getting run. What would guarantee it is each of us callling

our local cable and network tv stations and asking them to commit to running

this PSA. Will you take a moment and call your stations? Its a 30 second PSA.

Done by us, the Colorectal Cancer Network, CCNetwork for short. You get a solid

commitment that they will run it and then get the name address and phone number

to me and I'll send the tape to them immediately.

We will beat this one. I wish it had been in time for everyone here. But we

will reach a day where no one dies of this cancer.