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Colon cancer in women: the need for awareness.

I’m so honored to have the opportunity to speak at The American College of Obstetricians andGynecologists’ annual meeting. It’s wonderful to be here before all of you today. I admire what you do for a living: keeping women healthy and productive, literally! I am also delighted to be on a panel with two of the distinguished physicians who serve as medical advisors to the National Colorectal Cancer Research Alliance, the organization I co-founded with the Entertainment Industry Foundation. My journey here has been a difficult and painful one. When I first got my job as co-anchor of the Today Show 13 years ago, I was happy to emcee various lunches for various causes, but for the most part, I was concentrating on my family and my career, which were both exceeding my wildest expectations. At the center of that happy little world was my husband, Jay Monahan, and our two beautiful daughters, Ellie and Carrie. In 1997, Jay was 41 years old and seemed to be in perfect health. He was tired, but after all, we had two little girls and he was traveling a lot—and who isn’t tired these days? He had lost some weight, but who isn’t always trying to lose weight? He had a sour stomach and always had a roll of Rolaids in his pocket—but really, nothing out of the ordinary. Then, one morning, I got a call at my office: Jay was doubled over with severe abdominal pain. We went quickly to my internist; like so many men his age, Jay didn’t really have a doctor he went to on a regular basis. In a few hours, our lives were turned upside down when we learned that he had metastatic colon cancer. There was a tumor the size of an orange that was almost completely obstructing his bowel and the cancer had spread to his liver. Any problems I thought we had before this happened now seemed like a joke. Nine months later, my husband died after bravely facing an onslaught of chemotherapy, radiation, and the ravages and indignities of this insidious disease. He will forever be my hero, facing down death as long as he could with courage, grace, and even a sense of humor. If Jay had been screened for colon cancer a few years earlier, his life might have been saved. Although, as many of you know, screening is routinely recommended only for those aged 50 and over, despite the fact that 13,000 people under the age of 50 are diagnosed with this disease every year. When colon cancer is detected at an early stage, the 5-year survival rate is 90%. Unfortunately, only about a third of the cases are detected when the disease is still localized and limited to a tumor that hasn’t started to penetrate the colon wall. When colon cancer is detected at an advanced stage, the 5-year survival rate falls to only 38%. In stage IV, which Jay had, the outcome is much bleaker. After Jay died and I had a chance to pull myself back together, I resolved to do what I could to spare other families the heartbreak we had endured. I didn’t want anyone to die of embarrassment or lack of knowledge. I was desperate to bring colon cancer out of the closet—to get people talking and get people screened. Unfortunately, getting people to seek medical testing, as many of you know, is not an easy task. Fear, squeamishness, ignorance, and denial all keep people from getting screened. As a result, less than a third of the Americans who should be getting screened for colon cancer are in fact getting tested for this disease. “Colon Cancer in Women: The Need for Awareness” is an excerpt from Katie Couric’s speech at The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists’ Annual Clinical Meeting in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on May 3, 2004. Katie Couric