Preventative medicine critical to better health

To the editor:

I am a lucky cancer survivor and have been cancer free for the past eight years. Even with annual check-ups, my efforts to get thorough screening went unsuccessful for five years. Two local doctors told me the recommended age to get a colonoscopy was 50 years. I was only 41 at the time. A colonoscopy would have saved hundreds of thousands of dollars in future medical services. Denial of a potentially life-saving colonoscopy allowed time for my non-cancerous polyp to develop into stage 3 cancer requiring very expensive surgery, chemotherapy and radiation.

I eventually agreed to pay for my thorough screening out of my own pocket even though I had full medical coverage. However, the damage was a great deal more due to the five-year delay in medical screening. It was not the fault of the doctors or the insurance industry since they were following federal guidelines and recommendations.

I support legislation protecting cancer screening for females, but why not include protections for cancer screenings for men, too? If we do nothing, many undetected cancers will be allowed to grow, we will spend more on expensive cures, and patients will be denied timely treatment. Preventative screenings should be based on medical facts and the doctor’s recommendation. Anyone who thinks the costs of prevention outweigh the cure should visit cancer treatment centers to review the huge medical bills and the life-long damage to the patients.

Men and women should be allowed to have colonoscopies at a younger age with a doctor’s recommendation. Curing cancer will always be more expensive than prevention. We do not need an entire overhaul of our health care system, but we need a lot more common sense to prevail in medical decisions.

Bob Doyle

Wasilla