Mutt

My dad died of it, it's a very brutal way to go, the last stage is gruesome but in the end all cancers are. Robin Gibb should have been given the chance to end it on his own terms if he chose to, when there is 0% of survival and all that's left for the patient and family is agony to not allow anybody to help end the suffering is obscene. All because of this retarded illogical belief in a fairy tale God.

I know one thing, I won't go through the ending Robin Gibb, Farrah Fawcett, my father and millions of others have been forced to endure.

As for colonscopies, the test is only as good as the doctor who does it. My father's story - a family doctor on routine blood tests saw low white cell count, suspected cancer, ordered a colonscopy. My dad had one, gastroenterologist returned the news, no sign of cancer, no polyps, nothing. Huge relief. The anemia continued however, he was on iron pills for it, and kept going back to the family doc for blood tests, a year goes by and his white cell count is still low so the doc decides to get another colonscopy done by the same gastroenterologist, this time there's a very large tumor. Colon cancer develops slowly - the tumor didn't just appear during the year between colonoscopies, they catch small polyps but this guy misses a big tumor.

A year is a very long time to have cancer untreated/undiagnosed, did metasteses(spreading to other location/organ) happen during that year? I'll never know.
Because doctors cover for each other, after my father passed I was angry, I was thinking of suing for malpractice. I talked to my father's family doc who is a family friend, I asked him how in the world a large tumor could be missed on a colonoscopy, the whole fucking point of the test is to jam a camera up your ass and look through the entire colon. His answer 'Well it was in a 'quiet spot'' He didn't want to say more, I asked if the tumor had been detected a year earlier would the treatment/outcome for my dad been different. More ass covering 'That's hard/impossible to say, maybe not'

Years later I think I did the wrong thing, not because I wanted to receive money - no interest in suing for that. What if this doctor who did the colonoscopy is just a shitty doctor, slipshod or lazy, maybe he's a drunk or has other issues that affect his abilities. Maybe he misses cancer on colonoscopies regularly, even if it's twice a year over a 30 year career that *could* be 60 people and their families whose lives get affected. If nobody speaks up, don't expect the medical community to call one each other out - only in cases of gross incompetence does that happen. Sadly, only lawsuits with threats of big dollar judgements open eyes sometimes.

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