HEALTH | ADVICE | CANCER SCREENING

Facing The FIT Test

Don’t let procrastination and avoidance win — get tested!

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The package has arrived (photo by author)

This is a story I’ve been meaning to tell for some weeks, but my friend Beth’s post about her recent diagnosis encouraged me to make this one a priority.

Ontario Health sent me a couple of letters in the last year or so, in part to congratulate me on reaching the ripe old age of 50, and partly to “invite” me to do a FIT test — for colon cancer screening.

FIT stands for “fecal immunochemical test”.

What with everything else going on, I pushed that to one side. I’d deal with it later. Much later, if at all possible.

Days became weeks, weeks became months, and season followed season in my cozy little corner of rural Ontario. But all things must come to an end, and so too did the winter turn into spring, and the greening strawberry plants lured me into their wicked embrace.

For it was there, dear reader, that the tick first found its way into my shorts.

Or so I’m supposing, based on the bite and rash that soon appeared. But I’m not here to talk about my Lyme Disease.