Colon cancer can be family matter

Most people know a cancerous or precancerous condition means their children must be wary. Stephanie Cook learned that she had colon cancer because her 22-year-old daughter had precancerous polyps.

When doctors wanted to screen the whole family, Cook, who'd had a colonoscopy two years before with a clean bill of health, found that symptoms she had brushed off were actually signs of "full-blown cancer." A large tumor in her colon had grown into the wall, creating a blockage. She was lucky it hadn't spread.

After surgery and six months of chemotherapy, her prognosis is good. But now she has questions about how her own father and grandfather died so young.

Was it colon cancer? She doesn't know. That's not something her family discussed.

Families need to talk about disease, according to Dr. Randall Burt, professor of medicine at the University of Utah, Huntsman Cancer Institute investigator and its senior director over prevention and outreach.

While the number of cases has decreased, colon cancer is still the No. 2 cancer killer in America, with 150,000 new cases diagnosed each year and almost 60,000 deaths.

It doesn't discriminate on the basis of gender or ethnic background. "It can get us all," he said.

Only about 30-40 percent of adults in the right age groups are screened for colon cancer. Yet it's one of the cancers that can be "almost completely prevented or detected early with screening," he said.

Detected late, there is no cure. Efforts focus on palliation, comfort treatments. Colon screening usually detects polyps that can lead to the cancer. When they are removed, it's the cancer that never occurs.

There are colorectal cancers that didn't begin with a pre-existing polyp that could have been removed. That's extremely rare, Burt said.

After she was diagnosed, Cook learned the cancer has fewer rules than she'd believed. In her mid-40s, "I thought of colon cancer as being somewhere in the distant future. I never in a million years thought that diarrhea and blood meant cancer. I chalked it up to lactose intolerance. Mine was fast-growing. I thought it was always slow. I'd had a colonoscopy, so I was really fooled."

Families need to forget about propriety, she said. "Families need to talk. Know what Aunt Edna had, not just cancer. A good friend of mine was diagnosed at the same time. She was told her aunts and uncles had cancer. It was colon cancer. If she had known that, she'd have been in much earlier."