It’s always a wake-up call when a celebrity shares a medical story.
It makes us go out and get a mammogram to check for breast cancer, a heart check and stress test for cardiovascular disease or a full-body mole scan for melanomas and other skin cancers.
In the case of Deadpool actor Ryan Reynolds and his Hollywood friend Rob McElhenney (It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia co-creator and actor), stars of the Disney+ series Welcome to Wrexham, they both recently had their colonoscopies filmed because they turned 45 years old.
It was partly a fun bet, and part serious stuff to raise awareness.
“I made a bet. I lost. But it still paid off,” said Ryan after the very public procedure.
Surgeons found polyps – a small clump of cells that form on the lining of the colon – in both men, which, if not removed, could potentially have become cancerous.
One of the biggest killers of men and women in the US, and the third most diagnosed in Australia, colon cancer is preventable if irregularities are detected early on in a standard 30-minute colonoscopy.
After Reynolds’ first colonoscopy, his doctor showed him images of the tissue in his colon.
“This was potentially life-saving for you – I’m not kidding, I’m not being overly dramatic,” the doctor said on the video shared by Reynolds on his YouTube channel.
“This is exactly why you do this. You had no symptoms,” he said.
“You are interrupting the natural history of a disease … that could have ended up developing into cancer and causing all sorts of problems.”
Reynolds, who has 44 million Instagram followers, earlier in the week released a full video of the bet that kick-started his medical procedure.
He and McElhenney, co-chairmen who bought Welsh soccer club Wrexham AFC in early 2021, fronted the camera with this dare to each other.
They explained that they made a bet that if McElhenney learned to speak Welsh, Reynolds would allow the cameras to film him before, during and after his colonoscopy.
“He was so sure he said he’d publicly broadcast his colonoscopy if I could do it,” McElhenney announced in Welsh via subtitles.
It will ‘most definitely save lives’
Reynolds, deadpan, looks at the camera and calmly responds: “I would never normally have any medical procedure put on camera and then shared.
“But it’s not every day that you can raise awareness about something that will most definitely save lives.”
Tweet from @LeadFromBehind
In the end, both men had their colonoscopies filmed to raise awareness of what is a preventable cancer.
Reynolds’ colonoscopy was performed by CBS News chief medical correspondent Dr Jon LaPook, who showed images of the polyp on a screen after the procedure.
McElhenney had three small polyps removed.
According to the Cancer Council Australia, bowel (or colorectal) cancer causes the second highest number of cancer deaths in Australia after lung cancer.
About 90 per cent of bowel cases are cured if detected early.
It is now recommended Australians aged 50 to 74 complete a faecal occult blood test (FOBT) every two years, the most effective population screening tool for detecting early signs of bowel cancer.
Free FOBTs were introduced for all Australians aged 50 and over in 2006.
