Our Chicago: Colorectal Cancer Awareness Month

CHICAGO (WLS) -- March is Colorectal Cancer Awareness Month.

Colorectal cancer is now the leading cause of cancer deaths in men under 50 and the second cause for women, according to the American Cancer Society.

Actor Chadwick Boseman died from colon cancer in 2020 at the age of 43.

"It makes me angry that a disease so treatable took him from me when all we needed to start out with was knowledge," Boseman's widow Simone Ledward Boseman said in Washington, D.C. "It makes me angry that colorectal cancer diagnoses had been rising so dramatically in young people and young Black people in particular for 15 years before he was diagnosed and we still knew nothing about it."

ABC7's Tanja Babich shared her experience with getting screened early, without having any family history, and having more than 30 polyps removed.

Colorectal cancer is the leading cause of cancer deaths in men under 50, and it is the second cause for women, according to the American Cancer Society.

Dr. Ronald Hickombottom, an internist with the Chicago Family Health Center, encouraged younger people to get screened.

"Young people think they can't get cancer, but they can," he said. "The idea is if we get early screening, we get early detection. You can get early treatment and we can live."

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Hickombottom added that younger people tend to not recognize symptoms, and they don't see a reason to get an early screening.

"By the time they get to see me or one of the specialists it's usually at an advanced stage," Hickombottom said. "That's why it's still so important that little bowel irregularity, constipation that went on for three or four months, go in and see your doctor about it."

Colorectal cancer is the leading cause of cancer deaths in men under 50, and it is the second cause for women, according to the American Cancer Society.

The American Cancer Society said symptoms include: a change in bowel habits, blood in stool, diarrhea, constipation or feeling that the bowel does not empty all the way, chronic abdominal pain, aches or cramps and unexplained weight loss.

The ACS recommends that people at average risk begin regular screenings at the age of 45.

"If you have a strong family history of colon cancer," Hickombottom said. "If there's a first-degree relative, a sibling, those people can go as early as 40 years old."

For more information about colorectal cancer, click here.