How to save a life: Doug Miller's cautionary tale shows value of colonoscopies

SALT LAKE CITY — If you've seen the billboards on the freeway or the ads on TV and YouTube, you know that Karen Miller Coleman — daughter of the late Doug Miller — has become the spokeswoman for a campaign to promote colonoscopies. She agreed to do it because her beloved father might be alive today if he had had one. She agreed to do it because she believes it might save the lives of others.

She just didn't know that it would save her own life while she was at it.

You remember her father. Doug Miller was the avuncular, folksy outdoor reporter for KSL-TV and KUTV for more than 30 years, a man who was as comfortable as an old shoe to watch and listen to on TV. With his trademark white beard, he was manly, warm and fuzzy, and even if you weren't a hunter or fisherman you were drawn in by his charm and love of all things outdoors. He made a living doing what he'd do on his day off, whether it was hunting ducks on his regular TV show — "Outdoors with Doug Miller" — making a Dutch oven cooking video or hosting "Doug Miller's Sportsman's Expo." Every day was a paid vacation.

Then one day he complained of a stomachache. Twenty-one days later he was dead, at 58. He has already been gone five years.

He had seemed to be as fit as ever. He had just returned from a weekend fishing trip to Alaska that included hiking and camping. He went to work on Monday. After having lunch with friends, he felt ill. He blamed it on lunch and went home early. Later that night, he told his wife Marilyn that he needed to go to the emergency room.

Tests revealed an inflamed intestinal tract, probably an infection called diverticulitis, something he had contracted once years earlier.

He was put on a regimen of antibiotics, but during the next two days he was in severe pain, in and out of consciousness. Doctors prepared to perform surgery to remove the infected area of the colon, but when Miller was given anesthesia he died. Doctors spent several hours performing CPR and were able to put him on life support. He was placed on Life Flight to take him from Davis Hospital to LDS Hospital.

"That's when the most horrible fight of our lives began," says Karen.

Surgery was performed that night. Instead of infection, doctors discovered late-stage colon cancer. It had eaten a hole in his colon; his own waste was seeping into his body, which in turn caused septic shock (blood poisoning). His kidneys and liver shut down. He had a heart attack. Doctors thought there might be brain damage. He slipped into a coma.