Preventing sessile serrated adenomas

Posted by peacefish @peacefish, Nov 21, 2023

Hi everyone. I just had my first screening colonoscopy. Female, age 45, thin, don’t smoke or drink, vegetarian, exercise daily, no family history of colon problems. They found 3 large sessile serrated polyps (15mm, 15mm, and 20mm), removed two with a hot snare and scheduled me 3 months out to grab the last one. Pathology says not cancer, but I am reading how hard these are to find and completely remove. And how often they grow back and become cancer… Yikes. I feel like cancer is inevitable as I have no risk factors, I already do what you’re supposed to do to avoid colon cancer, and still have these huge scary precancerous lesions. What are people supposed to do to prevent these things from coming back (besides asking your doctor to please put you on annual colonoscopy for surveillance)? I just started drinking 4 cups of green tea daily and will soon be taking daily fiber. I also just read I should stop taking my calcium supplements. Should I take aspirin regularly? I just have no idea what I should be doing. My biggest goal has suddenly become just to reach my 70’s with an intact colon.

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bevjoy | @bevjoy | Nov 21, 2023

Thank you for the kind words! It's very hard to be calm when going through the unknown, especially health-wise. I had a very healthy diet and frankly, once I knew that it was genetic and that I was going to have annual scopes, I put away my concerns about different foods and ate as healthy as possible for my overall health. A bonus was that when the time came for surgery, I was healthy and left the hospital after 2 days. One step at a time!