That’s the premise of the study i joined, and advertised in the OP. Extra tests aren’t benign. They take time and emotional energy. Sometimes lots of emotional energy.
I’m hoping it shows that many women can test less often.
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I’m sorry you have to go through all that ao fan. It sounds horrible.
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This
Suggests the risks are much lower, unless a lot of people with uncomfortable bloating are going to an emergency department. It also suggests that the majority of serious complications are from the sedation, and not the actual procedure.
Pro tip: many practitioners have switched from using air to using CO2 to inflate the bowel during the exam. That’s much less likely to lead to uncomfortable bloating, because your gut can absorb CO2. It also completely eliminates the exceedingly rare but extremely serious complication of “explosion”. It’s also probably correlated with practitioners who stay on top of the literature. I don’t know if it’s worth asking, but if you are shopping around, you might want to choose a place that uses CO2.
My gastroenterologist still quoted 50 as the age for a colonoscopy. I’m definitely not doing one again until at least 50.
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Well, I’m doing colonoscopy in July (I’m 48) – found out there was family history, so I figure 2 years early is not necessarily a bad idea.
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Whoever told you that your symptoms after your colonoscopy were “psychosomatic” was extraordinarily unhelpful, by the way. What matters is that that’s a complication you had, and it was a real issue, and next time you should try to do something different to avoid that.
My problems with sedation are almost certainly psychosomatic, but i was really miserable and somewhat disabled for a couple of weeks after, and i went to a great deal of effort to avoid having it happen this time.
But sure, wait until you are 50. And if you have no family history, you may be a good candidate for something like cologuard instead of a procedure that kills a day and is a nuisance to prep for.
Pooping in a cup.
That is the way.
I did the FIT test and didn’t have to poop in a cup. But it’s hard to get a US dr to agree to that instead of colonoscopy. And we wonder why health care costs are so high…
So I had a colonoscopy whne my dr bugged me and now I’m good for a while.
My grandfather had colon cancer in his late 70s. It was either not a very invasive form or was found early. They removed it and he was good to go. No chemo or anything. Does that count as family history? Seems like cancer in the elderly years count less.
He later died from the flu, not cancer
first screening where i don’t need a biopsy!!!
it’s been a stressful week frantically refreshing that patient portal.
i feel like i hit the bi-rads lottery this time both being at the age my mother was diagnosed with breast cancer and it being the first screening where i don’t need a biopsy. i saw it come up and i was frantically looking for it to be bi-rads 2 rather than 4 among all the text.
like looking for actuarial exam results, but with your life.
i was semi wondering if this weird fatigue was somehow breast cancer. now all signs are it’s not.
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Uh, he put a small microphone where???
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Saw my gyn for the first time after joining the Wisdom study. I told her all about it and she didn’t complain about my plan to wait a year before my next mammogram, based on advice from the study. (A 2 year schedule was recommended for me, and I had one last year.)
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My gyn didn’t comment on it, but my PCP thanked me for helping advance the field. He also said he knows the principal investigator, and supports her research.
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is it just me or are ultrasounds like way more painful than mammograms? it took them forever to do it. they needed to find every cyst found on the prior one and measure them. apparently i have a lot of those. i assumed they took forever, and it hurt because i had cancer, but that wasn’t the case.
Hmm, I had an ultrasound on my liver and it wasn’t painful at all. Some cold jelly on me and they rubbed the little wand around and that was it.
Mammograms, on the other hand… yowch!
an ultrasound on your liver is not the same thing as an ultrasound on your breasts. this isn’t comparable at all.
Fair enough. I’ve never had one on my breasts.
you must not have dense breasts then. mammograms aren’t very useful for me. it said on the report that it’s very limited in what they can find on a mammogram because of extreme density. ultrasounds are to look for more.
the chick doing the ultrasound suggested i should get an mri too. i’m sort of done with screenings this year though and gonna assume the combo of ultrasound and mammogram is good enough.
I had an ultrasound of my breasts, once, and i didn’t find it painful. It was unpleasant, though. The guy doing it was visibly frustrated that he wasn’t finding anything. And I’m thinking, dude, it’s GOOD that you aren’t finding stuff.
probably doesn’t last as long when they don’t find anything. i have lots of things to find. for a person with a really small chest i have a lot of things to investigate in there and they press really hard with that wand thing.