SALT LAKE CITY (ABC 4 News) - There is some good news about the second leading cancer killer in utah.
In the last five years, Utah's screening rate for colon cancer has gone up twenty-five percent. That means more people are getting colonoscopies. The test that a Draper woman says saved her life.
"I was forty one years old, and a woman and active. I was really shocked."
Erin Day didn't want to be checked for colon cancer. In fact, the busy mom of two even tried to cancel her appointment. But a family history of the cancer finally forced her to get a colonoscopy.
"By the time I woke up from the anesthesia they gave me, the doctor was there saying, I'm sorry, you have cancer."
Erin was diagnosed with stage three colon cancer. And the next several months were filled with CAT scans, MRI's, surgeries and chemotherapy. All because of a tumor, found during a screening.
"You have a camera on the end, and a light and you also have a port here where you can actually remove polyps and cancers right through the scope."
Dr. Joe Eyring performs more than forty colonoscopies a week and he wants to demystify what many people are afraid to talk about. He says the screening is easier than ever.
"When you screen for colon cancer, you prevent it. You eliminate this disease. so the second leading cancer killer in Utah, we could probably eliminate ninety to ninety-five percent of the disease if people just screened properly."
Erin Day is now cancer free, but she goes in for a colonoscopy every two years. She calls it a gift to herself...one she plans to share with her family.
"I couldn't have done it without them. they are very supportive and very aware that they will screen early. I joke about that's what my kids will get for their twenty-first birthday is a colonoscopy."
The American Cancer Society estimates that almost one thousand Utahns were diagnosed with colon cancer just last year.
