I now certainly believe you should think long and hard about an early colonoscopy, not only if your aunt or grandmother or other relative has colon cancer, but also if any of these glandular cancers exist in your family. I firmly believe you have to be your own best advocate. We're hearing now that everyone 50 and up should have a colonoscopy regardless of risk factors or symptoms. That ought to tell you something. Problem is, even if you have a family history of colon cancer, doctors often recommend you be screened by a flexible sigmoidoscopy, not a colonoscopy.
Flexible sigmoidoscopy is effective for only the lower third to half of the colon.
My feeling is if you really want to be sure, getting a flex sig is like getting a mammogram on one breast. I can share some of my personal experience, but I want to be careful not to invade my husband's privacy or dignity in any way. Immediately after he received his diagnosis, I began to amass a lot of information on treatment, clinical trials, and experimental drugs. I was extremely frustrated to discover there's no single source for learning about the various experimental treatments for your specific disease. Pharmaceutical and biotech companies are highly competitive and sometimes secretive about the kinds of tests they're doing.