It’s a cancer that affects both men and women — and while 50,000 people die of colorectal cancer every year, it’s also the most preventable.
But there aren’t always symptoms, which is why screenings are critical.
And they’re not as bad as you might imagine.
Learn from someone who’s been there in today’s MedWatch report.
Morning show host Mike Reling is used to putting himself out there for his show in Gaylord every day.
While his most recent revelation may not be dinner table talk, he hopes being honest will help save lives.
"There’s two things when I turned 50: I got AARP stuff in the mail and my wife said it’s time for you to get a colonoscopy."
Like most, he wasn’t totally sold at first.
"I don’t like going to the doctor, I don’t like going to the dentist, I can’t even make a hair appointment,"Mike admitted.
But he quickly realized this decision wasn’t all about him.
"I started to think about it, and thought more about the people that love me rather than just think about me, and I thought how awful it would be if two years from now, the doctors say ‘well we found cancer, we could have caught it two years ago if you would have gotten a colonoscopy.’ I didn’t want to be that guy. I didn’t want that to happen to me."
And after it was all said and done, he says the procedure was easy.
"The experience was basically ‘OK Michael, you’re going to get a little sleepy. OK we’re all set," and it happens that quick. I was up out, ya know, literally I think was about a half hour, hour after we were done I was on my way home."
"The worst part is the preparation for it. You do have to clean out your colon so we can see, but the procedure itself make the patients pretty comfortable. A lot of patients don’t even remember the procedure itself so it’s really nothing to be concerned about," said surgeon Jim Shurlow.
Surgeon Jim Shurlow performed Mike’s procedure.
"We take a scope with a camera on the end of it and we go in through the colon and look for polyps or abnormalities that are concerning. Then if we see a polyp, we an take it out it’s kind of like a screening exam really," said Dr. Shurlow.
A polyp is basically a growth inside the colon — some are benign, some can lead to cancer.
"We take it out then patients don’t know. It’s painless. Then we send it to the pathologist to kind of evaluate it see what kind of polyp it is," explained Dr. Shurlow.
But for patients like Mike, that wasn’t even necessary.
"An ice cave, just smooth and clean baby!"
Mike says everyone he encountered at the hospital was more than accommodating.
"From the moment I walked into Otsego Memorial Hospital, to the moment I left, I felt like there was a team working for me. I felt like, I know this is weird, but like customer service. I was a patient, but I felt like a customer too because the people really cared."
And he says being close to home made everything that much eaiser.
"We went from Otsego Memorial Hospital, to Big Boy to home within 15 minutes, so to have this resource in our backyard. Otsego Memorial Hospital is sort of a nucleus of the community. It’s the center of the community, everyone is going to go there sooner or later for themselves or someone else to have the tech and the professionalism and the doctors and the surgeons we have here, it’s invaluable, it’s priceless."
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