I am the healthiest person I know, and I got cancer

Post by ben_w » Tue, Mar 08, 2022, 10:50 AM UTC

elric wrote: post #215

JMS2021 wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

UK here for context. We only have to fast for 12-24 hours prior to the colonoscopy. You can drink water or plain tea (no sugar, cream or milk). They offer "gas and air" mainly. You don't even have to have that. You are fully awake during the procedure, laughing at the live HD video feed from inside you on the big screen. You can be fully anaesthetised but that's very rare here in the UK. After the appointment, it's a…

> UK here for context. We only have to fast for 12-24 hours prior to the colonoscopy. You can drink water or plain tea (no sugar, cream or milk). Are you saying you only have to fast, without laxatives/prep? How does that work? I find it hard to imagine that anyone's colon is clean enough to get a good view after only fasting for a day?

Post by ekianjo » Tue, Mar 08, 2022, 10:54 AM UTC

xbar wrote: post #39

epistasis wrote: post #8

Individually, a person can reduce their cancer risk with a few things like not smoking, and avoiding sunburns, etc. but that does not eliminate the risk of cancer. It's not a disease that primarily comes from unhealthy living. That said, there is a toooon of cancer that we can prevent as a society though better public health messaging and better environmental laws, such as creating housing and cities that ban cars, s…

My sincere admiration for the author's strength in the face of this terrible hardship. A person can also avoid cancer by choosing a career that is not cancer-inducing. Given the author's cabin crew history: 3.4% of female flight attendants reported having had breast cancer compared with 2.3% of women in the general population group 2.2% of female flight attendants reported having had melanoma skin cancer compared wit…

Post by actually_a_dog » Tue, Mar 08, 2022, 10:55 AM UTC

saurik wrote: post #211

actually_a_dog wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You consider 1 in 500 high? That's only 0.2%. At that rate, assuming the probability of complication for each procedure is independent from all the others, you could undergo the procedure 20 times with only about a 4% chance of complication. Since the American Cancer Society only recommends colonoscopy every 10 years, starting at age 45, most people wouldn't even have 5 procedures done in a lifetime, which would give…

It would be one thing if you were to have done that math to show "the risk of colon cancer is so high that this decision is worth it"--and to be clear: maybe it is!--but the idea that you simply don't find a 1% chance of a complication to be a big deal as the absolute number looks small to you (as opposed to making some relative comparison to the rate of preventable cancer) horrifies me... and, for your sake, I hope…

Post by irpapakons » Tue, Mar 08, 2022, 11:04 AM UTC

Post by catchclose8919 » Tue, Mar 08, 2022, 11:05 AM UTC

firstplacelast wrote: post #218

catchclose8919 wrote: post #204

This is one of the things where it matters more how healthy/unpolluted your environment is . I'd dare to say that a not-so-phisically-active moderate-smoker living in a less polluted environment has way lower cancer risk than a bio-vegan athlete buddhist monk living in a polluted industrial hellhole. I'd wish we lived in a world where we could actually address chemical, air-particulate +/- microplastics pollution ser…

On a population wide evaluation, you are correct. However, some people are just more susceptible. It's complex, but if you just take a simplistic view of a single gene becoming cancerous, some people are only 1 mutation away and others are hundreds.