He got a colonoscopy for his 47th birthday and wants raise awareness among other Latinos

On the wish list of birthday presents many of us may compile, a colonoscopy would likely not be near the top.

But for Gustavo Arellano's 47th birthday, that’s exactly what he got himself. And, he decided to write about it and raise awareness of the need for this kind of cancer screening

Arellano is a columnist for the Los Angeles Times. He talked about his experience with The Show.

Arellano started with why he chose to finally get a colonoscopy, after having put it off for a while.

Full conversation

GUSTAVO ARELLANO: When you think about a colonoscopy, you think about older folks. And look, I'm now 47 years old. I'm no spring chicken anymore. But you're thinking of people in their late-50s, 60s. And part of it is because for decades, health officials and the health industry for that matter, they recommended that your first colorectal cancer screening start at age 50.

But, but in 2021, that got recommended to go down to 45. Not a colonoscopy necessarily. There's other ways to test for colorectal cancer. And obviously the message still hasn't gotten around that much. And one of the reasons why they suggested doing that is because rates of colorectal cancer are increasing dramatically among younger people.

And so for myself, I knew this. I obviously as a reporter, I tend to focus a little bit more on what the news is just in everything. And even though I knew this, I'm like, eh, well, you know, I'm healthy, right? My physicals are always good, my blood levels good. Cancer, colorectal cancer does not run on either side of my family.

Heart conditions is what I have to focus on as a male because of my dad's side of the family. So I, age 45, my doctor said you should get one, and I delayed it.

MARK BRODIE: And what finally convinced you to go and do it?

ARELLANO: Shame. Of course, my doctor, she's a great doctor. And she said, hey, so I noticed you didn't get that colorectal screening that I suggested after you turned 45 and you ignored the take home test that I sent to you after you ignored the colonoscopy. What's going on? And I said, I'm sorry, that's my fault, let's do this.

And she's like, well, I could tell, I could send you the, just the take home test. I'm like, you know what? No, let's just do the whole thing. I'm not afraid of it. But you kind of called me out.

BRODIE: And you mentioned your dad earlier, and as you write in your column he had had a colonoscopy, but it was many years ago, right. Like he hadn't one since then.

ARELLANO: Yeah. Once I figured out that I'm going to do this. So I want to do a little bit more research. And as it turns out, Latinos, especially Mexican Americans, especially Mexican American men, of which I'm all three, our rates of checking colorectal cancer are abysmal. And so when I mentioned it to my dad, he said, yeah, I got it.

And I actually thought he was going to tell me he had never gotten one before because he's old school Mexican. And you know, sadly, a lot of macho men have issues with anything involving their butt. Let's just be honest about this. And so he surprised me when he said that he got one.

Then I said if he had ever gotten another one, he couldn't remember when it happened. He's 74, so probably 15 years ago. Maybe when he was 60.

BRODIE: Yeah.

ARELLANO: Which again is kind of a little bit late. So I said, why did your doctor never schedule another one? He's like, you know what, I don't know. And of course the next question I asked was, everything OK? He's like, yeah, that's not a problem.

BRODIE: Well, so you mentioned that, you know, when a lot of people think about colonoscopies, they think about older people. I think the other thing a lot of people think about is the prep for it, which can be, you know, not the most pleasant experience in the world.

How did you find that? And I'm curious, you know, how what you were thinking about as you were doing it, especially having, you know, put it off for a couple of years.

ARELLANO: All you hear about is horror stories when it comes to colonoscopy.

BRODIE: Yeah.

ARELLANO: And so what, the actual process, no, it's not even scary. And of course what people always talked about being terrible was the so called prep. So you have to cleanse your gastrointestinal system completely. Without getting too graphic about it, you basically drink a humongous jug of a liquid. And in the past it has been compared to everything from oil, like car oil, to gasoline, to sweaty socks, to all sorts of stuff.

I gotta say, on my end, it wasn't that bad. They gave me some lemon-flavored powder to put into it over three hours. The only uncomfortable thing really was you try drinking 3 liters of anything, even your favorite drink. Three liters in three hours. Basically an 8 ounce glass every 15 minutes.

BRODIE: Yeah.

ARELLANO: Yeah. That kind of creeps up on you. And so in my what I tasted, honestly, it tasted like citrus blossom water. So, you know, very much used in Middle Eastern pastry. So kind of thick. So after a while, I kind of got heavy. I would have liked it with a shot of mezcal, but I was not going to do that.

BRODIE: Yeah, I don't think that's part of the recommended treatment plan there.

ARELLANO: Yeah. And then the aftermath. I mean, look, it's what, it's what we all do. It's nature. Dialed up to 11. Sure. So a little bit more than usual. A little bit. Just one after another. But that part didn't scare me at all because, again, it's nature.

BRODIE: Yeah. How much of a cultural shift, how much of, like, a shift in thinking do you think it would take to bring the numbers of people who do not get screened right now to get screened?

ARELLANO: Huge. I mean, I'll talk specifically about my two demographics. Being a Mexican American male, then just being 45 through 49. According to the American Cancer Society, only 9% of Mexican American people between 45 and 49 have been tested for colorectal cancer. Compare that to 20% of our white peers. Both of them, by the way, are super, super low statistics that both need to be upped dramatically.

And when it comes to Mexican American men, we are the group that, in the survey that the American Cancer Society took, this is, they published it last year, we lag behind Cuban American men, between Central American men, basically all Latin American men. Mexican American men are the ones who are least likely to be tested.

They attribute factors to income level because if you're more working class or poor, you're going to have harder access to medical anything. And also just, you know, the fact that people are not talking about this.

They're still, I got to say, when I went to go get my prep, the pharmacist, these are the pharmacists, they either euphemistically referred to what I was going to get to as my procedure or one like basically tripped over saying the word colonoscopy.

And so there's a shame attached in America, again, to anything involving the butt. Anything involving our innards. And that's, and that's the thing with me. I was never ashamed of doing the process. It was other stupidities, you know, as we say in Spanish, pendejadas, stupidities that got in the way, not the actual procedure itself.

BRODIE: Do you find that the reasons that the American Cancer Society found for why so many Mexican American men, especially in that age demographic, don't get colonoscopies, does that ring true to you?

ARELLANO: It does. I mean, it reminds me of what happened during the COVID-19 vaccine rollout, where there was a lot of lagging among Mexican Americans, Latinos in general, but Mexican Americans. I wrote about it. I wrote about it specifically with my dad, who didn't want to get the COVID vaccine because of all this misinformation.

There's no misinformation when it comes to colonoscopies. I think it's just a matter of, you know, we all think we're going to live forever again. And I can't overemphasize how people think colonoscopies are for people in their mid-50s and older, and especially in the younger generation, even if when you're in your mid-40s, you don't think that's going to be you.

But we have to get over that. We have to do it. It is such a simple procedure. And if you have health care especially, it's not supposed to cost you anything. Your health providers, by dictate of the government, have to provide something like a colonoscopy for you for free, like, or as low cost as possible. All that this cost me, I had to pay like a dollar for my prep that big, huge jug, which. That was it. That was it.