APRIL EDITION, VOLUME 2018, NO. 4
EARLY DETECTION CAN SAVE MORE THAN THE PATIENT By Pam Irwin, CMS Executive Director March was National Colorectal Cancer Awareness Month. Colon cancer doesn’t care how old you are. Colorectal cancer affects young and old and is intertwined in my own personal story. Colon cancer essentially changed my family forever and has taken the lives of two of my dear friends. This is my story. In 1967, my Mother was diagnosed with Stage 3 colon cancer during emergency exploratory surgery. She had been ill for months and in severe pain. My Dad was in the Air Force, and we were stationed at Ramstein AFB in Germany. I know now that they had recommended a colonoscopy, but she didn’t want to have it. That decision haunts me; this could have ended differently. I remember listening to her crying out in pain from my bedroom and multiple trips to the ER. I remember feeling helpless as a child to relieve her pain. By the time they operated, the tumor had perforated her colon. Her biggest fear was that she would have to have a colostomy for life. That didn’t happen. My biggest fear was that I would lose my mother. As a sixth grader, I remember believing my mother would die. I had nightmares about it. Due to a raging infection, she was placed in isolation. I didn’t see her for three weeks. We “lived” at Landstuhl Army Hospital after school each day while my Dad was trying to work, care for us, and figure out the future. My Dad made a pact with God that
he would stop smoking if He would just save my Mom. He stopped “cold turkey” and never smoked again. My Mother went from an average-sized, 5’8” woman of 155 pounds to a 105-pound skeleton resembling the photographs we had witnessed at the Dachau concentration camp. She could not digest food without medication for almost a year. When we returned to the States, my grandmother thought my mother was contagious and referred to her illness as the “Big C.” She refused to say the word. Later, I found out that my mother’s surgeon had told her and my Dad that she had a year to live. She believed it. We were enrolled in boarding school. However, that was not the hardest part. Because she believed her prognosis, sadly, she stopped living and lost her sense of hope and the future. She was unable to process that kind of prognosis and suffered from severe depression and anxiety for the rest of her life. She also was plagued with scar tissue adhesions and had multiple surgeries which created more scar tissue. At an early age, I became comfortable in hospitals, care-giving, and medical terms. She died at 52 of glioblastoma within six months of a brain tumor diagnosis. At 70, my Dad was diagnosed with Stage 1 colon cancer. He’d been tired. His primary care physician CONTINUED ON PAGE 3
CAPITAL MEDICAL SOCIETY 2018 MEETINGS CALENDAR Friday, April 13, 2018 CMS Membership & CME Meeting Stress In Medical Practice: Avoiding Risks of Burnout and Suicide Stefan A. Pasternack, M.D., Board Certified Psychiatrist and Psychoanalyst and Distinguished Life Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association, Boca Raton, Florida 6:00 pm Maguire Center for Lifelong Learning at Westminster Oaks CONTINUED ON PAGE 3 Spouses Welcome