Holiday Gift Giving Suggestions #2

Ok, this really should've been suggestion #1, but if you need to buy something for someone over the age of forty -- and if they come from a lumpy family, give serious thought to dropping this to thirty-five -- you should give serious consideration to giving them a gift certificate for a colonoscopy.

Granted, a colonoscopy is not a terribly romantic gift. It's not a fun gift. It's not particularly easy to wrap. But depending on the situation, it could have a pretty big impact on someone's life. 

You can ignore the SCCA PR, but do take a look at the difference in the five year survival rates between Stage I and Stage IV colon cancer:

At risk of oversimplifying, the chart on the left, that's the people that got a routine colonoscopy while the chart on the right, those are the people like me who got to be surprised when the cancer finally made itself known in its own unique way. You'll notice that a lot more of the people on the left get to make the five year mark than the people on the right. What the charts don't tell you is that the people on the left got much easier treatment paths than the ones on the right. 

So, yeah, the doctors might say that you don't need a colonoscopy until you're 50, but as someone who came down with Stage IV colon cancer at 46, you have my permission to tell any such doctor that they can bite me. 

Got someone you love who's entering middle age this fall? Help them celebrate by sending them to get a colonoscopy. Or if you know someone who's well into middle age but hasn't had their colon examined recently, send them to the same place. A colonoscopy is a multi-generational, gender non-specific gift. And having one can be the difference between a bit of routine surgery and a long and happy life, and some extensive surgery, followed by chemotherapy or radiation treatment or a host of other really crappy treatment options that will fill up the remainder of one's very short life.

Why wouldn't you buy colonoscopies for everyone on your gift list?