Nurses share their own colon cancer stories to promote screening
As an oncology nurse, Trisha Simon can empathize with patients suffering from the pain, fatigue and nausea of cancer and its treatment. Though just 36, she has colon cancer herself.
Simon continues to work as a community nurse for Hanover Township Senior Center, despite battling stage IV cancer for the past three years. She hasn't gone more than a couple of months without weekly chemotherapy, because every time her disease goes into remission, it comes back.
Believing everything happens for a reason, Simon feels her illness is a way for her to warn everyone else about the importance of getting tested for colon cancer - which is curable 90 percent of the time if caught early.
So during March, Colorectal Awareness Month, the Bartlett mom is distributing 1,000 pamphlets on behalf of the American Cancer Society, explaining the importance of a colonoscopy for people 50 or over, and for those 40 and over who have a family history of the disease.
"I believe my cancer is a gift in a very poor wrapping paper," she said. "I have people come up and say, 'The only reason I got a colonoscopy was because of you.'"
Simon has had three major surgeries to remove malignancies, and once had complications and ended up with meningitis.
She's gotten through it all with support from her family, friends, fellow members of the Lutheran Church of the Atonement in Barrington, and co-workers at the Bartlett Fire Department, where she is a paramedic and firefighter, now on medical leave.
One common problem for people without insurance is where and how to get a colonoscopy. Most are sent to John H. Stroger Jr. Hospital of Cook County where they may wait months for treatment.
Programs provide widespread free mammograms and Pap smears to prevent breast and cervical cancers, but no similar program exists for colon cancer, despite its being the second-leading killer among cancers, and being so treatable.
Simon's friends have set up a Trisha Simon Foundation to advance education and help families dealing with colon cancer, and she is trying to start up a program for medical providers to offer free colorectal screening.
Like Simon, Phyliss Strezo is a nurse who has learned firsthand the importance of getting screened.
Strezo, 58, of Streamwood, works at St. Alexius Medical Center in Hoffman Estates, and was prompted to get a colonoscopy by the death of her sister in 2007.
Though her sister didn't die of colon cancer, she didn't see doctors much and had no symptoms before suddenly getting sick and dying unexpectedly.
That prompted Strezo, who had already survived a hysterectomy for uterine cancer, to take control of her own health care and get her first colonoscopy last year at age 58.
The test found a polyp at a very early stage of cancer, and it was successfully removed.
"I can't speak highly enough for people not to procrastinate," she said. "Go get your colonoscopy done so you can have the same good fortune I had."
For information, contact the American Cancer Society at cancer.org or call 1-800-ACS-2345.