New CBS Evening News anchor Katie Couric is on a six cities tour to connect with viewers and promote colon cancer awareness to encourage colon cancer screenings. On Tuesday, Couric was in Dallas to attend a benefit luncheon for the American Cancer Society. According to reports, most of her talk was about her husband Jay Monahan's colon cancer diagnosis, treatment and death. She is quoted as saying, "He felt invincible, immortal, before doctors found that he not only had colon cancer but also that it was at an advanced stage, taking over his liver." She described Monahan's last day and the moment of his death. There were many tears in the audience.
Couric expressed the feelings many cancer patients and their families feel when the diagnosis of cancer is given. "Suddenly you need to have a medical degree to deal with all the options," she said. One of the reasons she worked to open The Jay Monahan Center for Gastrointestinal Health, named in Monahan's honor, was because she wanted to create the kind of center for others that both her and her husband would have appreciated when he was first diagnosed with cancer.
"It was a very lonely and isolating experience and very harrowing to go from one specialist to another. Having this comprehensive center full of compassionate caregivers all under one roof would have been a wonderful place for us to go. The opening was a bittersweet occasion, but the center is going to be incredibly helpful to thousands of families and what can be better than that?"
Couric began her six cities tour in Tampa, Florida. Today she was in Dallas and plans stops in Minneapolis/St. Paul, Denver, San Diego and San Francisco. She takes over for CBS Evening News Bob Schieffer on September 5.
1. i believe that many men are walking around with cancer and many with colon cancer. unfortunately we get screened and find out we have the big Cancer and we can`t understand why we had it? Or how we got it Yet alot of us will go on and continue not to get the check up and then we find out it`s to late? Why because we don`t want to really know, or we simply think we won`t get it. Guess again everyone should go to the hospital and follow up with a check up at least once a year, I am 60 years old I think I am GOING TO have a check up and a colonostomy in a month, and then follow up on a yearly basis, it,s better to have some life than none at all.usually it`s to late for many,.Pride sit it down on the back burner. Life is to short and after later years its difficult. So either waste away and hope for the best or be prepared to work it out, william Gipson. Good luck to all, work it out to enjoy tomorrow, have a check up.
Posted at 3:27PM on Jul 13th 2006 by William Gipson