Prevention is Better Than A Cure

The last 12 hours haven't been exactly great for me - but that's OK.

This morning I had a colonoscopy. For those of you who don't know what that is - here goes: It involves having a long soft tube inserted into the bowel to check for any cancerous polyps, what are polyps? (A polyp is an abnormal growth of tissue projecting from a mucous membrane).Why did I have this done? There is bowel cancer in my family. My mother's mother died of bowel cancer, my father's father died of it. My mother is a bowel cancer survivor, as is my Father.

Pretty heavy stuff eh?

So 24 hours ago I stopped eating - the previous 12 hours I couldn't eat anything that would stay in my body longer than 24 hours - my diet for that day was chicken, white rice, white bread - hard for me as I'm a healthy eater, I enjoy eating brown bread, brown rice - but you see those things are known as 'whole foods' which whilst good for your body they are not 'cleared' out of the system in time for the colonoscopy. Yesterday I was only allowed fluids and then come 5pm I had to drink the 'prep'. Now I'd be lying if I said the 'prep' was nice, it isn't - in all honesty by the time you have taken the 3 litres (mixed with water) it is pretty disgusting. The object of the 'prep' is to 'empty' your bowels. Not pleasant but hey if doing this is going to help the doctors find any pre-cancerous polps I have in my bowel then Im happy to go through it. After I only had to have this done every 3 years - its now 5 yearly.

So I had my preparation, it wasn't pleasant and I had my colonoscopy, which incidentally is really not that bad compared to the preparation., No its not great but hey there's bowel cancer in my family - so I think it's a small price to pay in order for the doctors to detect any signs I have early and treat it - so I don't have to die of bowel cancer as my grand mother did and my grand father.

So if you have cancer in your family, whatever type of cancer that be; and they recommend testing or 'screening' you for it.

There are many ways of reducing your chances of getting cancer, which I recommend you look into, especially if its any type of cancer runs in the family, but one way is screening, whether that be colonoscopy, mammogram etc..

I would strongly recommend you opt to be screened. It is far better to face the fear....get screened than to run from it and then find out when its possibly too late that you have cancer.