TRUST

A Journey through Cancer
By Muffet Dolar Villegas
April 20,2008
TRUST


I always thought that when we go to hospitals, we are safe and we are in the hands of trusted professionals. Even if I spend a lot of time in hospitals, I have not experienced anything that I should complain about.
But I was sad about the latest scandal involving a patient who was victimized by unscrupulous individuals and abuse of freedom of the press. He was caught on a video while an intricate medical procedure was being done to him inside a hospital and was shown in the internet for anyone to see without his consent, and eventually in any form of possible medium. It could have been less embarrassing if it was treated professionally by others.. To top it all, the media had a heyday showing it again and again on television.
We have this maddening habit of sensationalism or yellow journalism. We can go on and on talking and stressing issues until they become stressors. (who says that our freedom of the press under the present administration is limited?) Anyone can write or videotape anything about anybody under the sun, defamation, degradation, breaking people’s lives and reputations, reducing people as mere caricatures of themselves. We complain that we don’t have the freedom of the press and yet we can reduce our presidents and leaders into anything we like them to be and yet we are still here. Others feel that it is not right for other countries or nationalities to criticize our leaders or our fellowmen, but it is right if we are doing it.
Whom are we kidding? Whom are we laughing about? Are we anything different from these people who became helpless victims of their trusted individuals and institutions? Don’t they have emotions, families, sleepless nights, nightmares to deal with? They too are humans. They hurt the same way we hurt. Torture can come in many forms. Psychological and emotional battering is sometimes worse than the physical nightmare.
The question is, whom can we trust now? Some medical procedures done in the hospitals are intimidating to patients, yet they are necessary to detect early cancers. Standard colonoscopy which is commonly used here in the Philippines is a procedure wherein a camera is inserted through the rectum, allowing the doctor to see and remove any growths. Patients are usually sedated.

But thanks to researchers, a newly developed virtual colonoscopy, also known as CT colonography is less intimidating. Patients are asked to hold their breath for 10 to 20 seconds while computed tomography(CT) images of the colon are being taken.
Physicians hope that this kind of colorectal screening can encourage people of average risk to be screened at 50 or those who have greater risk to have cancer even earlier than 50 years old. “Colorectal cancer remains a leading cause of cancer- related death because patients are reluctant to be screened,” said Elizabeth MacFarland, M.D., associate professor of radiology at the Mallinckrodt Institute of Radiology at Washington University.
Unlike the standard colonoscopy, which shows only the inside of the colon, Virtual colonoscopy depicts the surrounding areas too.
Colon cancer can be prevented through proper screening among men and women.
Early detection may save your life.
To be fair, there are many medical practitioners and medical institutions in our country that are highly respectable and credible even if they are not perfect. Let us not lose our trust because of one bad incident. Lessons can be learned. But sometimes others choose the hard way.