by Marc Kovac
Capital Bureau Chief
Columbus -- Grace Tompos was diagnosed with colon cancer in 1996, just before her 59th birthday.
"I had no symptoms until two weeks prior to the diagnosis," the Wooster woman told the Ohio Senate's Health, Human Services and Aging Committee April 2. "It took several days and a hospital stay to identify the problem. ... By the time I was diagnosed, I had stage 3 cancer."
Regular colorectal cancer screenings may have turned up the condition sooner. Tompos has worked in subsequent years to encourage other people to get screened.
"I am grateful to be sitting before you today, because too many Ohioans who are diagnosed with stage 3 and stage 4 colon cancer are not," she said. "About half of all colorectal cancers in Ohio are diagnosed after the cancer has spread to other organs."
Tompos was in Columbus to testify in favor of Senate Bill 278, legislation that would require health insurance, public employee benefit plans and Medicaid to cover colorectal examinations and laboratory tests.
The bill is sponsored by Sen. Kevin Coughlin, R-Cuyahoga Falls who was honored earlier in the week by the American Cancer Society, receiving the Cancer Advocacy Award during a lobby day and lawmaker luncheon at the Statehouse.
SB 278 would require coverage for screenings for individuals age 50 or older or who are younger than 50 "and at high risk for colorectal cancer, according to the American Cancer Society's most recent cancer screening guidelines."
The result would be more Ohio residents getting screened (and potentially diagnosed with cancer) sooner -- which, in turn, would decrease the number of Ohio residents needing more extensive treatments or facing death from the disease, said Michael Sarap, a doctor from Cambridge who spoke as a proponent of the legislation.
The flexible-scope procedure also allows physicians to remove precancerous polyps from the colon before becoming a bigger problem later.
"We're only doing a small surgery in the early stages and not having to go through months and months of radiation and chemotherapy," he said.
Marc Kovac is the Dix Newspapers Capital Bureau chief. E-mail him at mkovac@dixcom.com. His Capital Blog can be found online at blogs.recordpub.com/capitalblog.