a very good post by the famous dr. oz. i don’t particularly follow him in any fashion but happened upon this article he wrote in ‘time’ about being diagnosed with a precancerous polyp. i encourage you to read it. he speaks from an interesting position: meshing professional knowledge with personal issues.
Our lives get complicated fast, and we are very uncomfortable being uncomfortable. We detest the passage into the unknown — that feeling of being out of control, victimized. Numbers like 75% or 6% or 50-50 are abstract and conceptual. The sickly, swoony feeling you get when your doctor says, “Come see me in my office,” is something we can all imagine today. And so we avoid the test to avoid that experience — and that was precisely the choice I had made.Read more: http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2075133_2075127_2075098-1,00.html
the discussion of who has access to healthcare aside, it’s a touching read.
I don’t know who Dr. Oz is, but it’s a good article. When I think about how MUCH I hated that colonoscopy, I remind myself to be grateful — a generation ago, those 3 polyps would have gone undetected and probably meant death within another 10 years.