3/2/16: March is Colorectal Cancer Awareness month and in honor of this, we have a special educational video for you. This year about 140,000 Americans will be diagnosed with colorectal cancer and almost 50,000 people will die from it. Colorectal cancer is the second leading cause of death from cancer in the United States. The good news is that this cancer is 90% curable – if you catch it early enough. Unfortunately, many people don’t understand how easy it is to get a colonoscopy and what the process entails.
To shed some light on this sensitive subject, Reverend Diane Sullivan, lead singer of the Dirty Blondes and art director at Seven Days, invited us along for her colonoscopy last year at the University of Vermont Medical Center in Burlington. Diane’s brother Michael died suddenly of colorectal cancer in 2003 – three weeks after being diagnosed. Normally, screening is recommended for people aged 50 and up but because of Diane’s family history, she gets checked regularly.
Diane hopes that, like Katie Couric, she can inspire others to take the plunge and talk to their doctors about getting screened. After all, it’s better than the alternative, becoming a statistic. So make your colon health a priority and talk to your family, friends and doctor about the importance of getting screened!
Music: The Dirty Blondes, Sex the Elastic, “Crybaby” “Fig Leaf Rag” by Scott Joplin
Chromatic Fantasia (BWV 930) by JS Bach
Run Amok,The Builder
Kevin MacLeod
Colon Animation: Bryan Parmelee
Colon Theme: Diane Sullivan & Bryan Parmelee
Medical images:
Mariana Ruiz
Blausen Medical Communications, Inc.
National Institutes of Health
This episode of Stuck in Vermont was made possible by
Hotel Vermont and Vermont Tourism
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This article appears in Mar 2-8, 2016.
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Screening can PREVENT bowel cancer. The people’s “absurd presumption in their own good fortune”, as Adam Smith called it (https://t.co/mXuH8QbLiG), clashes with the notion that they might have bowel/colorectal cancer. But it doesn’t clash with the information that they can PREVENT cancer by removing pre-cancerous growths (polyps) during a one-hour “screening” procedure, which will also relieve any symptoms caused by the polyps. That’s what you have to tell them if you want them to get “screened”. Experts may argue that the need for early detection of cancer ought to be persuasive enough. But if you want to persuade people, you need to give them the information that they *actually* find persuasive — not the information that they *ought* to find persuasive!
Awesome PR piece on (formerly DREADed) colonoscopies!! Just breezed through one last week, and can assure you the new prep drink is truly drinkable now!! (No more salty battery acid to gag your way through—it has appropriately been taken off the market!)
Thanks for sharing the scope’s imagery, Eve; I slept through my screening and was bummed that I missed watching it.
👍👍👍