Saturday, May 7, 2011

Outliers

Friday I spoke with my neighbor Adam who is in public health he was telling me how there was discussion on changing the recommendation that women get a clinical breast exam every year from 40 to 50 because the majority of people who get it are older. This troubles me for obvious reasons because I'm an anomaly, how can I help someone else from getting this? It kills me (Literally hee hee)that if I had just gotten a chest x ray last year this time it is the difference between living a normal life after surgery and dying in 5 years or less. There has got to be a way of preventing other people from going through this. Then from the planetcancer.org site "Each year, nearly 70,000 young adults between the ages of 15 and 39 are diagnosed with cancer. In contrast to those younger and older, survival rates for young adults have not increased since 1975."
So basically I'm a double minority, no one is testing people like me - even the lungcancer.org is only advocating testing for people over 60 who have a history of smoking. So how can we as a society highlight this enough so people can at least decide for themselves what tests to get in order to advocate for their own health?

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