Our June Men’s Health Month Series with GBMC bravely discusses the colonoscopy you don’t want – but you absolutely need, as noted by 56-year old male Nestor Aparicio with Dr. Dhanush Hoskere and Stacey Fifer of Craft Crushes, who provide a cautionary tale about why everyone over the age of 45 needs to get tested to save lives.
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
Men’s Health Month, colon cancer screenings, colonoscopy, GBMC, colorectal cancer, American Cancer Society, early detection, polyps, symptoms, family history, genetic mutations, preventative services, Orange Crush, Stacy Pfeiffer, Dr. Dhanush Hoskere.
SPEAKERS
Nestor Aparicio, Dr. Dhanush Hoskere, Stacey Fifer
8
Nestor Aparicio 00:01
Welcome home. We are W, N, S, T, am 1570 task Baltimore. We are Baltimore positive, and we’re positively into the summer months. Here we’re into the end of June. Had I done this at the beginning, I don’t know where the Orioles would have been. I know the Ravens wouldn’t have been anywhere. Luke is out covering sports all summer long, and we get the Orioles happening. And we’re also doing the Maryland crab cake tour. We have 17 Maryland crab cake tour stops this month, including this week at Reisterstown. We’re gonna be at readers crab house. We’ll have the Back to the Future scratch offs, also presented by our friends at Liberty, pure solutions and curio wellness. And, of course, the 125th year of Coppin State University, our partners. Now, I meant to do this segment a little earlier in June, because it’s a big month around here, and because I fall into I started, they sent me this. My friend Christina over GBMC said, hey, it’s up. There’s a big thing going on this month. It’s June. It’s Men’s Health Month. And I’m thinking, I’m pretty healthy guy. And, you know, I did the show from the Y the other day, and I go to Planet Fitness, and I’m in full house now, this is, this is about colon cancer screenings. And I’m like, Okay, let’s talk about that. Then they sent me the stats over the lifetime risk of developing colorectal cancer is one in 24 for men in the United States, colorectal cancer is the third leading cause of cancer related deaths in men. That’s according to the American Cancer Society, and I’ve done a few events for them. Colon cancer screenings, such as a colonoscopy are highly effective at diagnosing colon cancer even before the symptom onset. They also allow doctors to remove polyps. They don’t sound good, even before they become cancerous. I have doctors here. I have local business folks here. We’re going to talk about orange crushes in this segment. We’re going to talk about our friends over GBMC. I’m going to welcome in first. Dr, danous has scary from GBMC, along with Stacy Pfeiffer, who makes some drinks and has a story of a warning and loss that we’re going to talk a little bit about. It is springtime. It’s June. I don’t wear anybody down, but for both of you and Doc, welcome in. I’m the person that needs to get over and see you before the summer is over. Dr Husker, how
Dr. Dhanush Hoskere 02:01
are you today? Good. How are you? Thank you for having me a
Nestor Aparicio 02:05
pleasure to have you aboard at the end of busy work day. And Stacy. Pfeiffer is here. Stacy, you make beverages here, like, right around the corner right like Kingsville, right here, Baltimore County. Um, I happen to like an Orange Crush. You make a few. Do you not? Yup,
Stacey Fifer 02:19
8absolutely do. So as you just mentioned, everybody here in Maryland is familiar with orange crushes, and so it was a few years ago that I actually jumped into the world of creating this ready to drink canned Orange Crush cocktail. So yup, made right here in Baltimore. Well, I’m gonna have the
Nestor Aparicio 02:36
doc get me into doing this, because it says I’m 56 be 57 Stacy. Let’s start with you, and I’ll bring the doc in because we’ll get technical and all this and why I need to go see him. But you’ve you have a story that I don’t even know where to begin, but I’ve read up, and I want to give you the floor to talk about colon cancer and how it’s affected your life?
Stacey Fifer 03:02
Yeah, absolutely. So. Thank you so much, really, for inviting me and presenting the opportunity for me to be here just to even share a little bit regarding my my husband, if I have an opportunity to just kind of spread awareness and help potentially enlighten those about some of the symptoms that he was experiencing prior to the diagnosis, then maybe it’s an opportunity to possibly save lives, and of course, I want you know to do that through any outlet possible. So my husband was actually diagnosed with stage four colon cancer at the age of 37 there was no history of colon cancer anywhere in his family. So we were absolutely blindsided by that diagnosis. He unfortunately had been experiencing some symptoms for a bit. He had started really kind of communicating about having some pretty severe stomach pain that was accompanied by having difficulties and challenges, having a bowel movement. And these were symptoms that certainly began to progress, you know, as things, as things continued through his his cancer. So there were various things. And again, it started to really progress. And then he started communicating things about, you know, having to go, but didn’t really feel like he had the ability to go. And as a spouse, these were symptoms that didn’t really necessarily make sense to me. It’s very easy to say to somebody that you think is healthy. That’s, you know, 3637 years old, that you know maybe you’re just not drinking enough water, maybe you don’t have enough fiber in your diet. Maybe, you know, you’re not eating the best, most, you know, well balanced meal. And it’s easy to kind of take some of those symptoms and excuse them in that regard. Um. So unfortunately, again, he was diagnosed with stage four colon cancer at the age of 37 he had went to the emergency room a few times, really, kind of again, communicating some of the discomfort that he had. And so
Nestor Aparicio 05:13
going to the doctor was something he had done. I’m sorry, going to the doctor is something that he had done. The first thing is, my wife would say, go see the doctor. Go see the doctor. That that’s what my wife would say, Yeah,
8Stacey Fifer 05:25
you know, yeah, go see a specialist. Okay, so that was really my recommendation. I had experience working in insurance. I’m familiar enough kind of with what to kind of anticipate when you go to the emergency room. That’s certainly more for general care, not something specialized, but he went to the emergency room twice. So he went, you know, communicating again about these symptoms. They did X rays, they did blood work, they did urine samples, and he was ultimately sent home with some some laxatives. It wasn’t until he scheduled an appointment with the gastrointestinal doctor and had communicated what was going on that the gastrointestinal doctor was concerned about the symptoms that he was, you know, communicating that he had the gastrointestinal doctor at that point scheduled a CT scan. He wanted it done right away. So it was too late in the day that day to get the CT scan. He scheduled it first thing the following morning. And it was at that point immediately that he saw that he had stage four colorectal cancer. So one large, very prominent tumor in the colon, and it had spread through his liver. He had five very large tumors at that point in his liver.
Nestor Aparicio 06:33
I want to ask Doctor Husker, how how common is this stage four does not sound good to me, right? So, Doc, I welcome you in and talk about clinically, what what happens in these circumstances, and how early detection is everything from what I’ve gathered in 30 years of doing this, this is not my first time doing this piece, but everything I hear about this is something you have to get detected early Correct.
Dr. Dhanush Hoskere 06:57
Yeah. Now first, I just want to say, you know, Stacey, I’m sorry that you and your husband have been going through this, but, yeah, colon you know, colon cancer screening is very, very important for that reason, and it’s something that we’re seeing, actually, we’re seeing colon cancer come up earlier these days than it used to in the past. So our recommendations have actually changed for people to start getting screened for colon cancer starting at age 45 but still just kind of as in Stacey’s case, Stacey’s husband’s case, there are some cases where we see this in people who are even younger than that. And that’s why, you know, one of the main things that we always look for are like, What are the symptoms that the person has? So the things that I look for are any change in habits, weight loss, rectal bleeding, anything like that. If any of that is there, you know, I feel like necessary to get a colonoscopy, because that is the last thing that, you know, we want to catch late before we can really do any definitive treatment for it. And even if they have a larger polyp, then, you know, when we do a colonoscopy, we can potentially remove it at that time. But, you know, I have seen, you know, definitely a few patients who have come in earlier than 45 sometimes no family history, and have had, you know, colon cancer. So, you know, sometimes it’s very, very important to really dig deep into that family history, because some of these patients that initially didn’t think that they had any family history, sometimes may have been adopted, or they may have, you know, they may have had a distant relative that may have had colon cancer, and there may have been a few relatives who may have had colon cancer that they weren’t aware of, and that definitely put them at higher risk. The other thing is, there are some genetic mutations out there that put you at much higher risk for colon cancer. So some of these people need to start being screened much earlier. Some need to start being screened around, like the age around age 25 if they have, you know, if they have Lynch syndrome, some need to be start, you know, start being screened even around the age of 12 or 13, if they have familial adenovitis polyposis. So, you know, especially with the way that our diets are these days, you know, a lot more processed foods and things like that. We’ve started to see that the risk of colon cancer really has started to rise in our younger population, specifically more recently.
Nestor Aparicio 09:53
8Now we’re doing a little segment here for GBMC, and certainly for the month of June, and certainly for anyone. That’s pretty much like me, like a guy like over 45 and someone that has not been screened. And I am that guy. I’m a guy that does these segments and hasn’t been I’m a guy that’s afraid of you. Dr oscarry, and as much as Stacy said, send their husband to the doctor or whatever. For me, if I come in and visit with you, I have not had this done. Tell me what’s going to happen, and tell me why I shouldn’t be scared, and tell me what I should be scared of, and then tell me something’s a little wrong, not a lot wrong, what can then be done so that it isn’t stage four. Give me the scale of all this for someone who considers himself a pretty healthy 56 year old, doesn’t have any of these problems, pretty healthy eater. Have pretty normal everything that you’ve talked about. So I don’t know that I’m high risk, low risk. I don’t believe this to run in my family in any way. I don’t have any risk, any thought of that. But I wouldn’t know to your point. Where do I stand to call GBMC this month and say, All right, they’re talking to me. They’re not talking even to my audience. They’re talking to me, setting it up. What happens when I come in to visit with you for this colonoscopy? I’ve only heard the bad things on the internet about this. I haven’t talked to a doctor about it.
Dr. Dhanush Hoskere 11:11
So, yeah, we are talking to you over here. So you know what, what? What will generally happen is you’ll, once you get scheduled for your colonoscopy, we’ll get you the prep. And really, and this is what I tell all my patients, the worst part of this whole thing is the prep. So it’ll be, you know, before they used to have this four liter, four liter or four gallon jug of fluid that you would have to drink.
Nestor Aparicio 11:41
I remember that. That was years ago. That’s one of the reasons I avoided Okay, here we go, like you’re telling me. They always tell me, technology’s made doctor’s visits, but this is where we go. So you’ve already improved this for
Dr. Dhanush Hoskere 11:52
me from the old days. Okay, good. It’s getting better. So now I
8Nestor Aparicio 11:55
literally don’t know any of this, because if I make the appointment, my wife’s like, you got to go over it, because I would go to GBMC. It’s right down the street. Christina knows this. Everybody knows this. And I’m like, All right, what do I have to do? And this is where I’m stepping into it. Doxy, go ahead. So the night before, what do we do?
Dr. Dhanush Hoskere 12:11
So now they have these tablets, so you can actually take like, 12 pills. You do that twice, once in the evening time, once the morning of the colonoscopy. You still got to make sure you’re drinking a lot of fluid at that time. All right, I got that handled. I’m good at that. There you go. All right, that’s pretty much all you’d have to do. The only other thing is have a bathroom handy, because you’ll be having a lot of bowel movements. So that’s definitely going to be the worst part of all this. There are other preps that are like, smaller amounts of fluid that you could be drinking too, along with the water. And they’re also, you know, they there’s another new prep called Soo flave, where they actually are improving the taste of these preps to make it more palatable for everybody, because that’s one of the biggest complaints that people have had. So, you know now, you know you’re going to have something that tastes a little bit better, smaller volume. You know you have tablets available. So there are a lot of different ways to get prepped right now, and it’s kind of more as per your choosing it. It can be a discussion that you have with your provider about, how would you like to get prepped before, rather, where it was just one prep everybody had to do the same thing, and would kind of kind of go through that same, you know, same, same kind of torture, where you were drinking so much fluid and it was very, very difficult to do it. Now it’s much easier. So that’s the most difficult part. Then the more than the morning of you come in for your colonoscopy, they get you prepped up, ready to go. They’ll put an IV line in for you, and they’ll bring you into the room. You’ll have the anesthesiologist at bedside, taking good care of you, and they’ll give you some anesthesia, and that will generally be the last thing that you remember. I would be the one doing the colonoscopy. I do the colonoscopy, get to the end of your colon, and on my way back, I look for any potential polyps that are there. And if there are any polyps, then we attempt to take them out. And
Nestor Aparicio 14:18
at that time, at that time, right at that time? Okay, fair enough. Okay, so, so I’m taking the day off. That’s just the first thing I need to know. I’m off that day. Yes,
Dr. Dhanush Hoskere 14:27
8you’re okay. You’re taking that day off. You’re going to need a ride, somebody to come and drop you, drop you off and pick you up. So those are, you know, some of the things that you’ll probably have to plan a little bit ahead, ahead, in advance, and also maybe the day before, when you’re doing the prep, you may want to also consider either taking the day off or taking it at least little bit easy. You know, from
Nestor Aparicio 14:49
work, as I stare at Stacy on my screen and I stare at Dr O, I know that they’ve they’ve done this because of me, but I’m here to do this for you because I did. Not know all of this. I know I need to take my day down to do this. It is Men’s Health Month. It’s June. My friends at GBMC are concerned about me, and as I stare, see Stacy, I know she’s certainly saying you got to go do this, right, Stacy, so the story for your husband and the sad ending, and we’re going to talk about your drinks and all the amazing things you’re doing here. But the these are, this is a cautionary tale to not scare people like me, but to get us to go act right. Stacey,
Stacey Fifer 15:27
yeah, absolutely. So, um, you know, as it had been suggested earlier, fortunately, the because there has been a growing rise in early onset colon cancer, and specifically early onset colorectal cancer, the recommendation regarding the age has decreased from 50 to 45 but you know, as we kind of communicated earlier, that wouldn’t necessarily have made an impact regarding my husband. Um, so that’s why I just really kind of want to help spread awareness. If you’re at the age of 45 then absolutely take advantage of the preventative services that are available to us and go get the colonoscopy. Because, as the doctor communicated, really, the worst part is certainly that prep prior, if you’re prior to the age of 45 and you have history of colon cancer, then, as again, the doctor had suggested, those are things that should be examined, you know, earlier than that, than the age of 45 but my story, and what I want to help really advocate is for those that are experiencing some of these other symptoms that my husband did have. He was prior to the age of 45 he was 37 and he did have these symptoms. And so I just want people to be aware, you know, to follow your instincts and follow your body and absolutely take advantage of all of all of the steps that we have to be able to help advocate for yourself.
Nestor Aparicio 16:50
Let’s talk about your drinks for a minute, and I’m going to go back to the doc here for a minute. I love an Orange Crush. Give me the genesis of your story, and obviously your late husband story, and your family, I have seen your drinks around town at various places I’ve been up onto the website. I’ve actually seen them in in stores around town. Tell everybody about your delicious drinks.
8Stacey Fifer 17:10
Yeah. Thank you so much. So it was actually something that my husband and I had started a few years ago. Um, my husband sadly lost his his battle to cancer in 2023 so he had barely made it to the age of 41 and that’s why I really, again, want to take the opportunity, anytime I have to share his story, to to advocate on this behalf. But this was something that my husband and I had started a few years ago, this idea of having ready to drink cocktails that have gained so much prevalence in the industry now didn’t really exist. And so we figured out a way to do it. Orange crushes are, of course, very prevalent in the state of Maryland,
Nestor Aparicio 17:58
by the way, official state drink,
Stacey Fifer 18:01
June 1, it became the official state drink. And I personally love a good Orange Crush. So we developed, you know, the ability to do it, and figured out how to have the drinks made. Our crushes are all natural. They’re made with vodka distilled six times. They’re gluten free. Like I said, they’re made right here in Baltimore. I initially launched with just the original Orange Crush, but now I’ve got some other flavors. We do a strawberry lemon crush. I do a mango crush. Um, the business is owned and operated entirely by me. So absolutely you know, excited to be here and help, share something a little positive about that as well. So thanks again for the opportunity. You
Nestor Aparicio 18:45
8can learn more about craft crushes anywhere she’s you can find them out online. They’re here in the Baltimore area. Dr Danish has scary is here. Stacy Pfeiffer’s here. She’s a local business owner who lost her husband. He was diagnosed with colon cancer back in 2020, and passed in 2023 two years ago, in our hearts. To you, of course, Doc, I want to just finish this up by saying, don’t scare me, but talk me into doing this, and tell me that most of the time when you do this, we you have I wake up and you’re like, hey, everything’s good, everything’s fine. This is not designed to scare me, right? This is designed to educate me and to make me sleep better, not be worried about the night before and the tablets and all of that. You get more happy stories than the one Stacy has, right? When people come in, it doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong to me that I haven’t come in. I just need to make sure, right?
Dr. Dhanush Hoskere 19:37
Yeah, and really, the the biggest reason we do these colonoscopies is before it gets to that cancer stage. If we go in, we find these pre cancerous polyps and we remove them. That reduces your risk of developing colon cancer, because we’ve removed the problem before it became anything more serious. So that you know that is the reassuring. Part that you know, like in your head, that these pre cancerous polyps have been removed. I’m reducing my risk of colon cancer. I know exactly when I need to go back, and I’m just keeping my health. And you’re and you’re going to be continuing to be as healthy as you are at your at the age of 56 right?
Nestor Aparicio 20:21
I know how to look 56 but I’m trying. I, you know, trying to stay healthy. But I, this is on the list. This is on the list for any I’m 56 year old man. First thing, you’re a doctor. First thing, say, you ever have a colon? I don’t say no. And I, you know, sort of like, shrink back, because I know better. I know better. It’s what this segment was all about. So here’s what we’re gonna do, where, if we if we’ve scared or convinced one person today besides myself, we’ve been successful. And if we get to have two drinks with with Stacy and have a couple craft crushes, we’ve probably been doubly successful. So I’ll just end it with this and say, see our friends at GBMC. You know who you are. I’m pointing at myself, and my thanks to Stacy Pfeiffer from from craft crushes and sell me some drinks. By that, strawberry lemonade sounds delicious, Stacy, so thanks for
Stacey Fifer 21:08
that. Yeah, you’re very welcome. Thank you. And I know you’re always
8Nestor Aparicio 21:11
doing good events around here as well, doctor. Thank you very much. I hope to come and see you and be a patient of yours at some point, and a very happy, successful, and most importantly, when I’m done, I’ll have you back on and you’ll say, hey, he was scared. He was a sissy. I did a show back in June. He came in and he lived. And I’ll be the living, breathing example of good health
Dr. Dhanush Hoskere 21:33
for you. How about that? No, thank you for having me, definitely. And one other thing that I can tell you is you will get the best sleep that you’ve had in years during your colonoscopy. That is one thing that you probably will enjoy about the colonoscopy.
Nestor Aparicio 21:48
Can I have a craft Crusher too when I’m done?
Dr. Dhanush Hoskere 21:51
8Maybe not that day, maybe the day after.
Nestor Aparicio 21:54
All right, all right. I’m just doctor’s orders. That’s on this following what the doctor tells you. It is how Men’s Health Month. Here it is June, but every month Men’s Health Month around here, if you’re a guy like me, the lifetime risk of developing colorectal cancer is one in 24 for men, it’s one in 24 it’s not a very big room. And in the United States, colorectal cancer is the third leading cause of cancer related deaths in men. That’s according to the American Cancer Society. Take our warning. Take our sense of humor. Go over to GBMC. If you’re a guy, get screened. They save lives, even though do what I say, not what I’ve done, but what I’m going to do. There you go. My thanks to Stacy, my thanks to Dr Oscar, and my thanks to everybody over GBMC for giving me the warning of, if not a threat, but certainly a gentle nudge to do the right thing. I am Nestor. We are wnst. Am 1570 Towson, Baltimore, we never stop talking Baltimore positive right here in Towson. You.
