Pick Up The Phone

Two years ago, the world came to a literal and screeching halt with the arrival of COVID-19. In spring 2020, businesses and organizations both large and small shut down as people around the world rethought their strategies, adjusting to remote and online methods of working.

While working virtually may have been — and continues to be — a successful and viable model for many industries, there is one important arena where there is no acceptable virtual substitute for the in-person experience. That is heath and, in particular, cancer screenings.

According to the American Cancer Society, more than a third of adults in the United States skipped routine cancer screenings in the 18 months following the outbreak of COVID-19. Many did so because they were wary about visiting their doctors. Just the number of mammograms performed dropped as much as 80 percent at certain points during the pandemic. According to the Journal of National Cancer Institute, as a result of reduced screenings, experts project there will be nearly 2,500 additional deaths from breast cancer by 2030.

Nobody understands the importance of routine health screenings and early detection like Southampton Town and Southampton Village Justice Barbara Wilson. That’s because Wilson has had four run-ins with cancer — the first, cervical cancer, occurred in 1982, when she was just 21 years old. The most recent scare, a breast cancer diagnosis, came after a routine mammogram this past November.

According to Wilson, the doctor who did her subsequent surgery couldn’t even feel a lump. She says it was caught solely by the mammography machine and the radiologist who read the results. Had she put off that routine mammogram, like so many patients did in the pandemic, Wilson might have found herself looking at a much bigger mass, a much more difficult surgery and a much harder recovery.

We get it. Taking time out of your busy day in order to schedule routine doctor visits or preventative cancer screenings can be a real hassle, particularly when there’s lots of paperwork involved, bureaucratic hurdles to jump over or long wait times for appointments. It’s true, there is a tendency to put off these kinds of screenings. After all, procrastination is part of human nature.

But once it’s found a foothold, cancer doesn’t wait. Instead, it gains traction and grows, often spreading unnoticed until it becomes an unavoidable fact of life — and, too often, death.

But as Wilson’s own experience has shown — not one, not two, not three, but four times — with early detection, a cancer diagnosis need not be a death sentence. While there’s an old saying that goes, “What you don’t know can’t hurt you,” this is definitely not the case with cancer.

As Wilson herself recently said, “The worst thing to do is to do nothing. I know people say, ‘Well, I’d rather not know and just die.’ No. Don’t say that. There are so many great treatments available — and the early detection is so key to your survival.”

So do yourself a favor: Pick up the phone right now, call your doctor and make an appointment for that cancer screening that is long overdue, the one that, somehow, you just haven’t gotten around to scheduling.

Go ahead. We’ll wait.