Don't let worries about the dreaded colonoscopy stop you from being tested — a simple stool test could save your life - via healthing_ca healthing health
Barry Stein is the President and CEO of Colorectal Cancer Canada. A trained lawyer, in 1995 he was diagnosed with stage IV colon cancer around the age of 40 years old. After several treatments, including some in the United States, as well as clinical trials, there was no presence of the disease. He now creates awareness campaigns and helps guide patients through their own colorectal cancer journeys.
In Quebec, if you are over the age of 50, he says, you can walk into a community health centre — known as Centre Local de Services Communautaires in Quebec — and get a stool test. If you are under the age of 50 and presenting with symptoms, the best bet is to go to a walk-in clinic or the emergency room.“Not only do you have to see your family doctor to get a referral, but then you have to go see gastroenterologist,” he says, “And then you have to get a referral from that.
“I said, ‘Listen, I have no quality of life. I’m, like, doubled over in pain,’” she says. “’I wake up and I have shooting pains in my stomach.’”