<p>I am trying to make sense of the reports today that Robin Quivers had endometrial cancer. The report was that the cancer started in the uterus and spread outside and grew more cancer. I would imagine Robin had regular pap smears. Why wasn’t it detected?</p>
<p>Robin prided herself on vegan diet, green drinks, and coffee enemas…why did she develop cancer? </p>
<p>Are there any answers at all when it comes to the causes/diagnosis/ and treatment of cancer??!</p>
<p>Read the book “The Emperor of All Maladies” by Siddhartha Mukherjee. Cancer is incredibly complex and insidious. This book really covers the topic well, it is one of the best books I have read in the past few years.</p>
<p>Coffee enemas… eww… TMI. And doubt they do any good to reduce cancer risk! That is a quack remedy if I have ever heard one.</p>
<p>uterine cancer is not cervical cancer. I don’t think Pap smears test for it.</p>
<p>Garland is correct. These are 2 completely different cancers requiring different tests. Pap smear only look at cells on the cervix. A uterine biopsy would be needed to look at endometrial (within the uterus) cells.</p>
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<p>This is the correct answer - pap smears look at the cells of the cervix, not the endometrium (the inside of the uterus). Endometrial cancer is most common in older women (>50 years old). Generally it’s the first thing to look for when a post-menopausal woman has vaginal bleeding. </p>
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<p>Not sure if ■■■■■■■■, or…</p>
<p>What the hell is the point of a coffee enema? Simply sounds like a new (and stupid) way to introduce caffeine into your system. Drinking a nice hot cup of coffee with sugar and milk sounds a lot easier, and more pleasant, to me. Good grief.</p>
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<p>One might surmise that a vegan diet, green drinks, and coffee enemas don’t prevent cancer.</p>
<p>VH, I think you are right about the caffeine introduction via enemas - this is exactly how suppositories work.</p>
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<p>Exactly which is why I refuse to give up chocolate, beef and other assorted foods I love. Cancer is like roulette. You never know when the ball will land on your number. I’d rather do what I want, eat what I want, etc. If I got cancer tomorrow I wouldn’t blame it on the swiss cake rolls :)</p>
<p>collegeshopping, it sounds like you are someone who might benefit from reading the book I posted about in post #2. There are definitely environmental factors you should be considering, including what you eat and inhale into your body. It isn’t roulette. Just because every nuance of every cancer cause is not understood, some are. Roulette is random – cancer is NOT random, although some aspects are not completely understood (yet).</p>
<p>Environmental factors and genetics both play into cancer. Personally I think coffee enemas sound like a good way to give yourself cancer.</p>
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For all we know, they could cause cancer.</p>
<p>Geez, this “throw your hands up in the air” attitude makes me a little nutty (can you tell? :)). Very doubtful that a vegan diet causes cancer. I am not a vegan, or even a vegetarian, but there are research studies from reputable sources (and that have been replicated) showing that certain dietary habits do increase your risk of developing cancer. And it is not the vegan choices that seem to be the culprits. Now the “green drinks”, I suppose it depends on what is in them… but assuming they are a smoothie of some kind that includes fresh green vegetables, that also isn’t going to show up on the list of items that seem related to cancer incidence. So we DO know something about this. </p>
<p>Not going to vouch for the coffee enemas, though. Eesh.</p>
<p>No, I doubt vegan diet or green drinks cause cancer. But you can’t think that being a vegan or drinking green tea is going to prevent endometrial cancer. And the coffee enemas…please. :rolleyes:</p>
<p>A registered dietician I know eats the “perfect diet.” She exercises, doesn’t smoke or drink alcohol. She got breast cancer, and for a while, railed against the unfairness of getting cancer when she had the lifestyle often touted as the best way to prevent it.</p>
<p>Sometimes there is just no predictable way to prevent certain outcomes. The best we can do is to reduce our risk and then just let life happen, and of course, use available early screening tools at proper intervals.</p>
<p>Nrdsb4 - regarding the dietician. What I would say to someone like her is, perhaps all of your good-living habits kept you from getting that cancer ten years earlier!</p>
<p>My dad was the same way. He quit smoking in his mid-to-late 60s, but got lung cancer (which he died from) at 82. Had he not quit smoking, he might have gotten that lung cancer when he was 70.</p>
<p>I had a biopsy for suspected endometrial cancer several years ago. Not the most pleasant procedure but not terrible either. Similar to a pap smear with a different device and some cramping post procedure. Fortunately, it was negative.</p>
<p>With someone close to me struggling with a cancer where he has 0 risk factors it is puzzling to me how a healthy person even discovers cancer until pretty late in the day unless you somehow happen to come across it. </p>
<p>I was tested last year for endometrial cancer, not a test I’d really recommend unless there was reason to think there was an issue. But so many cancers I read about it seems that unless you catch it early you’re in for a horrible struggle. And many have few symptoms at first.</p>
<p>^^^^Which is a good reason to get all of one’s screening tests at the appropriate intervals, including colonoscopy.</p>
<p>^^^^^LOL, just got scheduled for mine. 
Just had a pap smear, then after the colonscopy, time for the mammogram.</p>
<p>And finally, the dreaded dentist visit. HATE HATE HATE going to the dentist. My apologies to the dentists on CC. :o</p>
<p>Yeah, dentist is just about at the bottom of my list of places to go. </p>
<p>It’s a vicious circle because I never get to go and just get cleaned there’s always some issue, so that makes me want to go less often. I’m sure I’m overdue. I’ve been in mammogram hell this year. Suspicious spot which led to a which led to an ultrasound biopsy and more mammograms, which led to an MRI scan which led to a biopsy for the other breast, but then they couldn’t find the suspicious area when I went back. The upshot was I don’t have cancer, but I do have something they are going to remove. Sigh. I’m not convinced I wouldn’t have been better off without all the extra radiation.</p>