Word: colon
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...been just two years since Katie Couric's husband Jay Monahan died of colon cancer at age 42. Looking back, the popular co-host of NBC's Today show recalls that the only clue they had that anything might be wrong was that Monahan, who worked as a TV legal analyst, often felt tired and achy. That wasn't too surprising. He'd been busy covering O.J. Simpson's civil trial for MSNBC, shuttling back and forth between California and the home he shared in New York City with Katie and their two young daughters. Says Couric: "We thought...
...didn't. After the trial ended in January 1997, Monahan's fatigue persisted. A few months later, doubled over with abdominal pain, he went to a doctor. A series of X rays and other scans revealed that Monahan was suffering from advanced colon cancer--so advanced that the disease had spread to his liver. He died Jan. 24, 1998, two weeks after his 42nd birthday...
Like most Americans, Couric and Monahan had never thought much about colon cancer. Why should they? Monahan was young and healthy and had never smoked. There was no history of colon cancer in his family. Until her husband became sick, Couric didn't realize how common cancers of the large intestine, which includes the colon and the rectum, are. Or how deadly. Or how preventable...
...part, Couric, starting March 6, will be host of a week-long series about the disease on the Today show. In what must be a television first, she will broadcast footage of her own intestine, taken during a recent colon exam. (She's fine.) Couric has also joined longtime friend and cancer activist Lilly Tartikoff (whose husband Brandon died of Hodgkin's disease in 1997) and Hollywood fund raiser Lisa Paulsen (who specializes in connecting celebrities to worthy causes; see following story) to finance a public-education campaign and urge more aggressive research into colon cancer...
Before you start thinking, "Just what we need, another gimmicky disease of the month," stop to consider how much good such a campaign can do. There are probably more myths and misconceptions about colon cancer than about any other killer disease. Young people think only old people get it. Women think only men get it. African Americans think only whites get it. (In fact, American blacks are at greater risk than whites, and the disease strikes men and women, young...