Video by Scott Roberson
Still recovering from having 12 inches of her colon removed, Susan Jackson was scared.
Doctors had found a cancerous polyp in Jackson’s large intestine during a routine colonoscopy, the first one she had in more than 10 years. The surgery was successful, but she was concerned about what the next step in her cancer treatment would be.
To her surprise, her surgeon, Dr. Frederick Lane, quickly eased her worry. He told her that she was cured.
“Her colonoscopy saved her life. If she wouldn’t have a screening colonoscopy, in a year or two, this would have been a lot bigger and been unfixable at that point,” said Lane, a colon and rectal surgeon with Franciscan Health Indianapolis.
Jackson is convinced that if she had waited longer to get the screening done, it’s likely the cancer would have grown, possibly spread, and required more intensive surgeries, radiation and chemotherapy. With one test, she was able to keep her experience and her recovery relatively simple.
The 70-year-old Prince’s Lakes resident wants to share her story to help other people understand the importance of the screening tool and illustrate how it changed her life.
“If I can tell other people, I want to. The idea that they caught this, and I didn’t have to do chemotherapy, that I was cured, is pretty miraculous,” she said. “If the worst happens, and cancer is found, it can be cured in its earlier stages where if you wait, you’re going to go through a whole lot more pain and illness.”
See Saturday’s Daily Journal for the rest of her story.
