Colorectal cancer is the third most common cancer worldwide, accounting for approximately 10 per cent of all cancer cases and is the second leading cause of death from all cancers. This is tragic because it shouldn’t be and doesn’t have to be.
I don’t wish to risk boring you with a repeat admonishment about the dangers of ignoring even the smallest symptom of colon cancer, however I will risk this because even if my experience helps to save the life of just one of you reading this article it is a worthwhile risk. I am quite confident that most of you who take the trouble to read my article will ignore my advice. This is of course your privilege and besides most of you won’t, God willing, ever be given a diagnosis of colon cancer (also known as colorectal cancer.)
You have busy lives. The car needs repairing, there’s that shopping for the weekend and you mustn’t forget to take your cat to the vet’s. You really don’t have 30 minutes’ spare time to visit the doctor to check out why you’re feeling breathless, more fatigued climbing the stairs these days and finding out why your stools have specks of blood in them or why you have discomfort in the area of your stomach. And you certainly don’t have 40 minutes’ spare time to have a colonoscopy. You eat healthy food, you exercise and you’re young (or youngish.)
I am not a qualified physician and my experiences are just that, mine. But having watched a fair number of colon cancer survivors on YouTube telling their own stories I discovered that we have a lot in common. When you are given a diagnosis of cancer all those things which seemed so important suddenly become as nothing. Getting the car repaired? Who needs a car? And as for shopping, that can wait and the fridge is full of food already. Sorry but the cat’s upset stomach is no longer an emergency. Because when you first receive the diagnosis of the big “C” the world, that world when all those other things seemed so important, stops spinning. If nothing else that diagnosis makes you understand what really matters.
It is true that eating healthily, keeping reasonably fit and not becoming obese reduces your chances of getting colon cancer. But unfortunately it doesn’t eliminate the chances. Colon cancer, having wreaked emotional havoc and death on the elderly above the age of 55 for many years, has decided to turn its attention to the young. There are many reasons for this and clinical studies are ongoing to try to find out those reasons. But whereas the medical advice used to be that you should get yourself screened for colon cancer after the age of 55 that advice now suggests 45.
Whilst recovering from my Colon Cancer surgery I was informed by a member of the colorectal cancer surgical team headed by Dr Aamed al Araimi that a boy of 27 was being treated for colon cancer in the Royal Hospital. Many thousands if not hundreds of thousands of young people under the age of 45 are now being diagnosed with colon cancer. And many of these are having their lives cut short by this disease. But of course most cancers including Colon Cancer can be cured and are cured if caught early.
The reason why colon cancer and other cancers are often deadly is because doctors are often presented with them at an advanced stage when of course they are more difficult to cure. Colon cancer is usually discovered by chance. By this I mean that, as in my own case, a patient visits the doctor for some symptom which appears to have no connection to cancer. In my case it was fatigue and breathlessness. Cancer was the last thing on my mind. It was only due to the expert advice given by my excellent Omani doctor that I agreed to have that colonoscopy which saved my life. I’ve now had the surgery and it would appear that my cancer was caught early enough to allow the colorectal surgery team to remove all the cancer. Thank God it hadn’t spread to distant organs (metastatic cancer.)
Finally, I would like to express my gratitude and appreciation for all the nurses and doctors in the Royal Hospital where I was treated as an Omani resident for their expertise, professionalism, kindness and care. I genuinely don’t believe I could have received better treatment anywhere else in the world. Oman’s health care service originally built on the foresight of that remarkable leader the late Sultan Qaboos is in my experience now reaching new levels of excellence under Oman’s current leader, His Majesty Sultan Haitham bin Tarik. As a British resident married to an Omani wife I feel privileged to have been given such world-class treatment in my hour of need.
Karim Easterbrook
The author is former School Principal Cambridge U.K.
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