Save your groans. The torture won’t last long this time. Just three questions, true or false, easy-peasy.
But there’s a catch, a reason you might want to put down your cell phones for a moment: Your life may depend on your answers.
Here we go.
1. You can get cirrhosis of the liver by drinking too much alcohol, but you can get it by eating too much food, too. True or false?
2. Even though rates of colorectal cancer are going down for people in general, they’re going up for African Americans, who also are dying at higher rates.
You like that word, don’t you Mr. Jones? Well, if you had colorectal cancer, it would seem decidedly less amusing.
3. Although I know you’re convinced Mr. Stafford’s lectures kill more Americans every year than anything on the planet, what I want you to tell me if it’s true or false that Hepatitis C kills more Americans every year than the much better advertised HIV.
Alas, class, as much as I would like it to be otherwise, the correct answers are all too true.
So is the answer to the bonus question: Most people who have Hepatitis C don’t know it.
You’re right, Miss Donahue, that’s not good.
But there is good news.
Dr. Lanla Conteh will be coming to our fair town Saturday, May 13, to do what she can to someday make the answers to all four questions false.
She’ll be doing it with the help of Springfield’s Sisters United for Prevention, whose members are connected with all the black hair salons and churches and other organizations in town who can help spread the word.
The event itself will give Dr. Conteh and others who haven’t been there before to see some major league women’s hats, usually sported in church, and applaud cancer survivors strutting their stuff in stylish fashions that are part of the party.
Although on the phone Dr. Conteh sounds like she’s from South Charleston, she actually is from Sierra Leone. I know, Mr. Jenkins, you were wondering whether Sierra Leone is a singer. No, it’s a country in Africa.
She graduated from Case Western Reserve Medical School, then did her specialty training in things gastrointestinal at Vanderbilt University. Now her main job is to help people who show up with liver disease at EastPoint, part of Ohio State University Hospital East, in Columbus.
Dr. Conteh says some of her patients who’ve never had drink and never used IV drug or have any other risk factors walk off the street and are told they have cirrhosis of the liver, and maybe even liver cancer, just because of their diets.
It’s called non-alcoholic liver disease, and she wants you to know it can happen to you. As it turns out, the liver doesn’t care whether the fat build up around it that leads to cirrhosis comes from too much drinking or too much eating.
And that means people who have diabetes, obesity, high blood pressure and other conditions end up with the same risk for liver cancer as drinkers, IV drug users and people with untreated hepatitis.
No, it doesn’t seem right, Jeanine, and that would make it like a lot what?
Yes, like a lot of other things in the world.
Now, let’s talk about Hepatitis C. It’s actually something you may want to tell your parents or grandparents about. Doctors say people 45- to 65-years old should be tested for it because, back in the day – the ‘70s and ‘80s – they were doing some high risk things you may not necessarily associate with the idea of a grandma or a grandpa.
And that could make them victims of another of those unfair things: If they got Hepatitis C back then, there’s no way they’d know it unless a doctor gives them a test. Hepatitis C doesn’t have any symptoms – not an itch, a rash or a runny nose – until real trouble arrives.
So when people who have it eventually learn that they’re dying of it, they’re really being blindsided. But that leads to one other piece of good news Dr. Conteh will bring: there now are drugs that can effectively treat it, if it’s caught early enough.
Mr. Jones, I’d like you to wake up for a moment again and snicker for me right now in your charmingly juvenile style. Thank you. I wanted to get that out of your system before I said the word colonoscopy.
Not enough black people who are 50 and older are getting colonoscopies. That means they’re being diagnosed with colon cancer when it’s more advanced. And that means more of them are unnecessarily dying.
Dr. Conteh says it’s because some people don’t know they should get colonoscopies to check out whether there are any polyps growing in their intestines that could turn cancerous.
She told me some don’t get tested because they’d rather not know that polyps may be growing inside them. Others don’t know what a colonoscopy is, don’t like the idea of having a scope inserted in the bottom side of them or having to do what’s necessary to empty out their intestines so it’s clean enough in there for the doctors to take a good look.
At Ohio State East, they have what’s called a patient navigator to help people through the process of getting a test that might save their lives. Because otherwise, it’s the pain and symptoms of colon cancer that might send them to the doctor later on.
So my assignment for you class, now that you all know the truth about all this is to become a patient navigator for your mom and dad, your grandpa and grandma, your aunts, cousins and anybody else you know.
Let them know what they need to do and – this is both the important and hard part – make sure they do it.
However you did on today’s quiz, consider that your final exam.
P.S. If you want to go to the Sisters United event, just call 324-4301 and make a reservation. The $30 won’t kill you. It’s for a good cause.
HOW TO GO
What: Sisters United for Prevention’s 13th annual Luncheon and Fashion Show
When: 11:30 a.m. Saturday, May 13
Where: Champions Center, Clark County Fairgrounds
Tickets: $30 at Young’s Hair, 1928 E. High St., call 324-4301
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