The right testing for colon cancer can save your life. What every woman needs to know. It's the second most deadly cancer, killing more people each year than breast or prostate cancer. Yet colon cancer doesn't receive nearly as much attention. What's more, no celebrity has gone public with a first-person account of the disease to raise awareness, as former First Lady Betty Ford did for breast cancer and General Norman Schwarzkopf did for prostate cancer.
Many women assume colon cancer strikes mostly the elderly or men.
But doctors are seeing younger and younger patients with the disease, some of whom develop the illness early because of a genetic predisposition. And the cancer actually kills more women mainly because they don't get screened as frequently as men. With the right screening, the disease technically known as colorectal cancer can actually be prevented. More than half of women age 50 and over are now checked for breast cancer, but only about 24 percent of women age 50 and over have had their colon examined in the past five years, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. Many of us put off testing, fearing it may be embarrassing or uncomfortable.