Hartford HealthCare Cancer Institute breast surgeon Dr. Kristen Zarfos has a reputation among her patients for her warm personality, her compassion and her willingness to engage patients and their families in treatment at every step of their breast cancer fight.

“I think the most important thing is to have patients engaged in their own healthcare and to be proactive,” she said.

But when it came to her own health, life caring for others seem to get in the way. That included not having the recommended colon cancer screening – a colonoscopy – at age 50.

“For me like so many other people so many other women, men too, I was busy taking care of everybody else,” she said. “I put my own health on the back burner.”

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When she was 53, she started experiencing alarming symptoms that something was physically amiss.

“For me it was blood in the stool,” she recalled. “I put it off couple of weeks, thinking maybe it’s just a hemorrhoid.”

Her personal gynecologist urged her to have a colonoscopy. Dr. Zarfos did just that – and was diagnosed with Stage I colon cancer.

“Once I knew I had colon cancer, it was time for me to step back take off the surgeon’s hat and turn it over to my surgeon,” she said.

Dr. Zarfos was fortunate. Her tumor was found in her lower intestine, meaning that the symptoms had developed in the early stages of the cancer’s progression. Surgery and six months of oral chemotherapy left her cancer free.

She acknowledges, however, that her life was in peril.

“Had I put those put it off any longer I wouldn’t have the joy and the privilege of being here today,” she said.

Preventative screenings for cancers of all kinds – including breast and colon cancer – are available at the Hartford HealthCare Cancer Institute. Learn more here