If you're over the age of 50, have you gotten your annual colonoscopy yet?
March is Colorectal Cancer Awareness month and Jocelyn Laidlaw, journalist and colorectal cancer advocate, encourages you to ensure you're all healthy "down there."
Laidlaw was diagnosed in September 2022, at the age of 53, but it began as an enlarged, hard lymph node in her groin earlier in the year.
"I just presumed my body was fighting off something insignificant, especially during the COVID era," said Laidlaw. "I went to see my doctor and at first they said it was probably nothing to worry about. This went on for a number of months."
She said she got the lymph node removed at her own insistence. Three days later, she got a call that it was fully involved with cancer.
"It was not lymphoma, which meant my cancer was coming from some place else," she said. "It took a few days. We discovered the source was a very significant colorectal tumour."
Laidlaw then went under chemotherapy for the next six weeks and she said she is still recovering to this day, physically and mentally.
"I never suspected that I had cancer," she said. "I'm a well informed person, I'm on top of it. I have an active, busy lifestyle like many Canadians, I wasn't pushing things to the backburner. I never believed that I had cancer, it never even crossed my mind."
Because she wasn't the "stereotypical" colorectal cancer patient, she has taken an advocacy stance as it completely changed her lifestyle, career, and her family's life.
"I just want to share this message so other Canadians can take advantage of early screening tools to try and catch anything that they may be developing as early as possible," said Laidlaw.
According to Colorectal Cancer Canada, 90 per cent of cases are curable and survivable when they are diagnosed in the early stages. It's the fourth most commonly diagnosed cancer in Canada as of 2023.
"Your best weapon here is regular screening," said Laidlaw. "A physical every year with your doctor, a FIT (fecal immunochemical test) test. Yes, this is a home fecal test. It sounds gross, but it's easy to do if you can get over your squeamishness. Do that FIT test when you qualify, across Canada it's about 50 years old."
That test will look for blood in the stool, as well as other unusual indicators something may be wrong. Then, that gives your doctor the opportunity to send you in for a scope for further inspection.
Laidlaw also said you can watch for changes in your bathroom habits.
"If you're going more frequently, chronic diarrhea, chronic constipation, pain, blood, those are things you need to report right away," she said. "Now it might not be not be cancer and chances are, it isn't. It could be something else minor. But if it's cancer, or even the beginning of it, you want to catch that as early as possible."
If you have any issues with advocating for yourself and telling your doctor something is wrong, Laidlaw reminds to remember that you know your body best.
"If you're not advocating for you, how can you expect anyone else to do so?" she said. "You are your own best advocate and what that means is you're going to go to your doctor and you're going to speak up about what's happening. If you're having blood in the stool, diarrhea, constipation, pain, anemia, fatigue. If your doctor doesn't appear to be listening or brushes you off, you're going to say 'I hear what you're saying, who are you referring me to today?"
The eligibility rate for colonoscopies in Canada is the age of 50. However, Laidlaw and Colorectal Cancer Canada are fighting to lower that to 45, just as the US has done.
"About 24,000 Canadians will be diagnosed this year, about 9,300 will die from colorectal cancer," she said. "We can really dramatically impact those numbers if we screen more polyps in the colon, which are not cancerous, but are precancerous. We catch them early and then we can remove them and you become a patient who had polyps removed instead of a colorectal cancer patient. That's a monumental difference."
In Ontario alone, 9,000 people will be diagnosed with 3,000 dying from the disease.
If you would like to support Colorectal Cancer Awareness Month, you can do so by ensuring you get your annual tests done. You can also share on social media that you got your scope done and tag Colorectal Cancer Canada.