Southern 7 Health Dept. raises awareness for Colorectal Cancer Awareness month

CAPE GIRARDEAU, Mo. (KFVS) - The Southern 7 Health Department is raising awareness and trying to encourage people to get colonoscopies, but the executive director wants you to know there are other options to get screened.

“A fit kit would be one option is an easy to use take home kit, there’s no any kind of food restrictions. There’s nothing like that. It’s just a simple stool sample and the kit can be flushed down your toilet, you mail the results back to the Health Department. And then we run some tests on it and the test will tell if the sample is positive or negative blood if it contains blood in it we will contact the patient,” Rhonda Andrews-Ray said.

“It’s highly associated with your family history. So if you have colon cancer in your family, you might want to start talking to the doctor even as early as in your 30s just so that they can recommend some kind of testing route for you. But if you’re just a member of general population, you don’t have anybody in your family that’s had it, usually they recommend 45 is a good age to start looking into colonoscopies, kits, things like that,” she said.

“It’s one of those things that were very silent and a lot of times people don’t get tested until the diseases already advanced. But if you notice that your bloating for some reason, your stool has changed and it’s gotten thinner than what it used to be. If you’re having some kind of cramping if you’re having pain if you’re bleeding. You know if you notice about the bathroom, there’s blood. That’s always the cause for concern and you need to get to the physician and get it checked out,” she said.

“We are doing a Strollin for the Colon, which is a 20 foot inflatable colon you can walk through it. It’ll show you basically what tumors was like what college look like what a normal colon looks like. And we’re going to be out there giving away some things and giving out fit kits to people and see how much awareness we can bring,” she said.

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