I agree. I make sure I never delay mammograms and colonoscopies.
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Iāll take my chances.
Thatās so hard for me to understand.
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Of course your health ā your decision! Wondering why if you care to share (cause I know others who also delay - including members of my family- and I just try to understand the reasoning).
If itās the nausea from prep I can tell you that nausea from 6 months of chemo is waaay worseā¦
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I think diagnostic tests like colonoscopy and mammograms are very important to being healthy. However, I can understand how the recommendations- yearly, every 5 years, etc. are guidelines and you can be a little flexible about them. It is not like a bell goes off at exactly 12 months or 5 years and it must be done. I generally follow the guidelines but donāt worry if my checkup is a few months late or a mamo ends up 18 months instead of 12 and my colonoscopy is 5.5 years instead of 5.
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If you are highly concerned, and you are using colonoscopy for primary screening, you may also want to do FIT each year between scheduled colonoscopies, with a positive result bringing the next colonoscopy in from the schedule.
The physician said five years for some reason. Iād put my trust in him and not stretch it to six.
That said, I was due for my colonoscopy in August, but I stretched it to October. Which I donāt think is a stretch at all.
Keep in mind that some docs are better than others. You need to know their ADR. Its a quality effectiveness measure for docs who do colonoscopies. If they are below average and you āstretchā in between testsā¦look up āinterval cancer.ā But yeah, take your chances. Lost my mom to colon cancer. 100% preventable.
@cryptodad: What is ADR? What does it stand for?
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The article is about the ADR. Apparently GI docs are evaluated based on their ADR, or Adenoma Detection Rate. Thereās a range that is considered āgood.ā The logic is that if your ADR is too low, you might be missing adenomas.
It feels like kind of a strange measure to me. If few of your patients have adenomas, your rate will be low. I guess over lots of time and lots of patients, itās assumed that youāll trend toward the mean.
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Like any KPI, this can (and will) be manipulated (remember the āon time departureā fiasco?).
From the article:
ā There are many variables that factor into an endoscopist identifying an adenomatous polyp and hence an endoscopistās ADR. Personal factors include the one and done phenomenon or being satisfied with finding one adenoma instead of continuing to seek more. Since an endoscopistās ADR is the proportion of screening colonoscopy patients who are found to have at least one adenoma, the measurement of ADR does not measure an endoscopistās ability to identify all adenomatous polyps in a patient. An endoscopist who is trying to manipulate the ADR quality measure, would do a high-quality examination until they found one adenoma and then could decrease the quality of their examination for the rest of the colon without negatively affecting their ADR.ā
Thereās more discussion of possible pitfalls in the linked article.
Have you asked others?
My DH delayed his colonoscopy by 1.5 years. He has paid dearly for that ever since. Grade 3 colon cancer was found after he finally went in. Heās grateful to be alive, but his body and quality of life has never been the same.
Even knowing that, I delayed my own colonoscopy. It was a burden on my peace of mind, however, and I have not done that again.
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I battled stage 4 rectal cancer 16 years ago. I still battle the side effects of treatment to this day. I was 48 at the time of diagnosis so at that time the colonoscopy age had not been lowered to 45. Boy, do I wish I had a colonoscopy a few years before I was diagnosed.
Donāt put off your colonoscopies.
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My H was 46 when he was diagnosed. His motherās GI doc had told him to go ahead and have his colonoscopy done early because he had found many precancerous polyps in her and felt that DH was at risk for early cancer.
Turned out to be true.
CTTC - I suggest that they get the test - everyone says, āyeah, I should.ā I donāt know why they delay and I guess I donāt pursue it (just hoping they change their minds and donāt want to aggravate them too much!). Seems like inertia, frankly.
Iām on the 5 year plan and had the latest colonoscopy earlier this week. It was a bit delayed, firstly having to wait a while to get an appointment and then a month longer to get a weekday morning one rather than the original late Friday afternoon one. The idea of waiting till 3:30 pm after a sleepless night wasnāt appealing (not to mention the Friday afternoon bit).
The prep turned out to be much harder this time - Miralax mixed with 96(!) oz of Gatorade or equiv. 64 oz over 4 hours during the evening before and the remainder between 2 and 3:30 am. I managed to consume most of the 64 oz but became increasingly nauseated and shortly after the final dose lost a fair bit. It was much the same story the following morning leaving me very worried Iād be unable to have the procedure at all. Confessed all to the nurse and physician and they decided to go ahead and found a couple of tiny polyps. They said prep had been fine.
I share these miserable details only in the hopes itās helpful to someone else who gets nauseated by the prep. I spent so many hours worrying it couldnāt be successful ( so Iād have to go though the whole mess again) and was unable to find anything very useful on line despite searching. On the plus side, Iām a big fan of Propofol (the anesthesia drug) and how non groggy you feel on awakening and of the kindness (including a heated blanket) and respect with which I was treated during the process.
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Regarding delaying or stretching out the timeframe: If youāre going to do this unpleasant thing anyway, why not do it according to the schedule the doctor deems appropriate? Youāre not gaining anything ā at all ā by delaying. And, you might be losing something instead.
Thatās different than someone who just plain isnāt going to do it at all. I have a friend whose husband is a retired urologist. And they have collectively decided not to do it. That, I just canāt get my head around.
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Yes, weāve been given an incredible tool to possibly extend our lives and I am very thankful for it.
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