On modern medicine

As I wrote here the other day, I went in for a colonoscopy.

I'm almost a decade past the point where you are supposed to get one.  Just too busy, I guess, to have made it in back then, or in between, when I should have.  Having said that, a couple of my contemporaries I know very well only made it in recently as well.

In my last post on this topic, I discussed the statistics of colon cancer.  What I learned in my colonoscopy was that I have a polyp that was too big to be removed, and now I'll have to have surgery to address it.

The doctor is nearly certain that its not cancerous, but it has to be removed.  He also basically indicated it would turn to cancer if it wasn't removed, at some point.  Not yet, basically, but some day.

Which puts me in that statistic in a way.

Lesson learned.

Another lesson learned, however, is that this also puts me in the class of people who'd die early on for sure but for modern medicine.  A sobering thought.  We all imagine ourselves living until 102 worry free, but that isn't the case for most of us.  Lots of us make it further now than we would have, thanks to modern medicine.