INDIANAPOLIS — This month for Check Up 13, 13News recently talked with a man who said he knew for years that something was "off."
He was right, and now, he encourages you to learn from him and act a whole lot sooner.
"I knew years before I reacted. I'd been having the symptoms for easily six, seven years," Tim Battles said. "I didn't need a medical degree to realize normal people don't have blood in their stool, you know, on a constant, continuous basis."
Battles was 52 when he finally went to see a gastrointestinal specialist, Dr. Mohamad Yousef at Ascension St. Vincent.
Yousef said the colonoscopy screening for colon cancer is often avoided.
"Among the patients that need to be screened, out of three people, one person has never been screened, and we are talking about a disease that can be prevented," Yousef said.
Screening guidelines call for a first screening at age 45. The goal is to detect and remove polyps before they potentially become cancer.
During Battles' screening, doctors detected a malignant mass.
"Was staged as a stage 3b, which is a stage where the cancer is locally invasive and involving some of the lymph nodes," Yousef said.
"But once I found out, I thought it would be a bigger deal than what it was," Battles said. "I thought it would be a more life-altering, catastrophic event in my life, and it really wasn't."
Battles had surgery and chemotherapy, and responded well. Now, he wants you to learn from him: knowledge is power.
"Like I said, 'it's OK. Go get it, go get it checked. Go get it done.' And then, you'll know," Battles said.
And there are a couple of ways you can do that through Check Up 13 with Ascension St. Vincent.
One option is to get a free at-home test kit. This helps identify existing cancers. This is for those of you who are at least 45 years old who are unable or unwilling to get a colonoscopy, so call and see if you qualify.
Keep in mind, the gold standard screening is the colonoscopy. It's available at Ascension St. Vincent locations in Carmel and Indianapolis, and it's billable to your insurance. This screening can detect a cancer or even polyps that have the potential to become cancer, so reach out to request a kit or make an appointment. Call the hotline at 866-824-3251 or register online through this link before midnight on March 13.