Colonoscopies - Everybody Should Get One

I've just had my fourth colonoscopy. All good, it's just something I do every few five years or so. You start by drinking a laxative to get yourself nice and clean inside. That's probably the worst part of the whole experience!

This year it was green. It was a pretty enough colour, but still tasted horrible.

Then they sedate you. They want you as relaxed as possible as they put the camera in. I was so relaxed I was out for the count!

Then they put the camera in and have a good look around. This time there wasn't much for them to do, they only found one pesky polyp which was easily removed. So now I'm good to go for another five years!

Colon cancer is nasty, it's the fourth most common cancer in the UK. Almost 43,000 people are diagnosed with bowel cancer every year in the UK. Around 268,000 people living in the UK today have been diagnosed it and more than nine out of ten new cases (94%) are diagnosed in people over the age of 50.

I started having colonoscopies in my forties after a doctor spotted that my CEA levels - a marker for bowel cancer - were high. They didn't find anything amiss but suggested that I have it done every five years or so, and over the years they have found dozens of polyps, which they remove and test for cancer. I've always been clear, which is good news.

Several friends of mine have had colon cancer, but have responded well to treatement. But I also know people who have died from it, which is one of the reasons I have regular colonoscopies. It's a slow growng cancer, and providing you have a check every five years or so, there isn't really chance for a polyp to develop and then turn cancerous. A colonoscopy isn't fun, but I definitely recommend them as a way of staying healthy! Oh, and I had an endoscopy at the same time, which is another story! I made sure they used a different canera, obvioiusly!