They put a face on what we do.  Those men and women we meet online and then sometimes in person.  Those people who would never have come into our lives if we didn’t share a common battle against colorectal cancer.

We watch them struggle with chemotherapy, recover from surgery, hunt for a new treatment or a promising clinical trial.  Then a message comes in an email or over the phone — died quietly in my arms, lost the battle, passed away yesterday among his friends and family.

Red, Diane, Dagny, Rebecca, Richard, Debbie . . . so many names and faces and stories.  Heartbreak, tears, and grit.

This month we turn their courage and their inspiration into action. 

Awareness can save lives.

• Colorectal cancer can be prevented.  Get screened!
• Colorectal cancer can be treated.  Research leads the way!
• Colorectal cancer can be beaten.  Fund the fight!

I remember when I met Rebecca Dague Marec. It was right before last year’s C3 Advocacy Training. I was sitting with Dusty Weaver (C3’s Grassroots Coordinator) and Judi Sohn (C3’s Director of Operations), doing last-minute planning, when in strode Rebecca with her luggage. And though I still had no idea who she was, this young woman from Ohio began to regale us with a breathless story of chasing Senator Mike DeWine down the jetway just an hour before as she had disembarked her flight.

Rebecca died late Thursday night, February 22. She leaves her very caring and loving husband, Alain, and their two small children, Julia and Andrew. And she leaves all of us, who learned a little bit more about life because of her.

I was pleased to be able to write about her in a recent issue of Momentum. As I interviewed her then and remembered back to that first meeting in DC, I kept picturing this dynamic woman who seemed constantly on-the-go. In fact, she related to me how she had run again after Senator DeWine during her town’s Fourth of July parade. And she tracked down Rep. Ralph Regula in a coffee shop town meeting, with such tenacity combined with prudence and graciousness that she was hailed by senior DC lobbyists as having achieved the “quintessential constituent lobby visit.”

Yet, Rebecca was obviously so much more than just this person on-the-go whom I knew. She was extraordinarily thoughtful in what she stood for and believed in and fought for. And even in last Saturday’s sleepless morning hours when I wept while reading the moving email from her husband reporting that she had passed away, it was Rebecca’s reflectiveness that shone through, as well as the love and mindfulness she bestowed upon her family even on the last day. True, Rebecca fought for cancer funding, but she fought that fight for her children and family and friends and for the multitude of people who needed someone to fight with and for them.

I so much wanted Rebecca to walk in that door again at this year’s Call-On Congress and regale me with a story. It aches to think that she won’t. Instead, she has left it to us to continue telling her story and the stories of so many whom we love and have loved.

On March 20 at C3’s Call-On Congress, I won’t be able to be on Capitol Hill without having a tear (likely, many more) in my eye. That much I know. But I also think I will be just a bit better advocate, on behalf of so many affected by cancer. Even after my 24 years in Washington, DC, Rebecca helped teach me how to be better at what I do. But more importantly, she reminded me why I do it. Though I knew her but briefly, I will profoundly miss her.

Again in 2007 C3 Colorectal Cancer Coalition joins a collaboration of 58 organizations to focus on colorectal cancer awareness during the month of March.  March has been National Colorectal Cancer Awareness Month since 1999.

When I first began working with colorectal cancer advocacy ten years ago, colon and rectal cancers were rarely discussed publicly.  Even though colorectal cancer was the second most common cancer killer of men and women, no one talked about it. 

There was no national colorectal cancer advocacy organization and little support for colorectal cancer patients and their families.

Meeting with a reporter at that time who had rectal cancer,  I shared my own experience surviving two colon cancers.  With tears in her eyes, she said, “You are the first person with colon cancer I’ve spoken to in the nine months since I was diagnosed with this disease.”

Since that time, Katie Couric had a colonoscopy on national TV.  Several national colorectal cancer advocacy organizations exist.  Screening colonoscopy is reimbursed by Medicare.  The fifty-year standby chemo drug 5FU has been joined by two new drugs and three biologic agents approved by the FDA to treat colorectal cancer.

In 2004, 2,200 fewer people died of colorectal cancer than in the year before despite increasing numbers at risk for the disease.  A small — but significant step — toward ending death and suffering from colorectal cancer.

We’ve come a long way since those days of silent embarrassment, but we’ve got a long, long way to go.

• In 2007, 153,750 men and women in the United States will be diagnosed with colon or rectal cancer and 52,180 will die from it. 
• In 2003. only 42% of people over 50 had been screened for colorectal cancer, either by fecal occult blood test, sigmoidoscopy, or colonoscopy according to the American Cancer Society.
• Again in 2003, only 17% of uninsured people over 50 had been screened.

Colorectal cancer is preventable, treatable, and beatable. Get Screened!

Women who had a blood transfusion during surgery to remove colon or rectal cancer were at a higher risk to develop a blood clot in their leg veins (VTE) according to a study of over 14,000 Maryland surgical patients.  However, men did not have a similar increased risk.

VTE or venous thromboembolism can be dangerous, even fatal, if the clot travels from the legs to the lungs.  Patients in the study who experienced a VTE were almost four times as likely to die and twice as likely to be admitted to an intensive care unit.  They spent more time in the hospital and cost of their care was higher.

In the absence of a blood transfusion, women had no greater risk of VTE than men.

Other risk factors for VTE included an emergency admission before surgery, age 80 or older, liver disease, and low surgeon volume.

Kent R. Nilsson, MD led a team from the Johns Hopkins University Schools of Medicine and Hygiene and Public Health in Baltimore who reviewed  discharge information for more than 14,000 patients in Maryland hospitals between 1994 and 2000 who had surgery to remove colorectal cancer.  One percent of those patients developed a VTE.

SOURCE: Archives of Surgery, February 2007; 142:126-132.

An additional article about the study appears in Reuters Health..