Your doctor speaks II Women's Special Interest in Cancer
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The University of Illinois Medical Center campus in Chicago presents. Your doctor
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speaks an exploration of today's health problems during
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the series doctors in the colleges of medicine dentistry pharmacy
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nursing and graduate college at the University of Illinois Medical Center
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campus. We'll discuss the latest advances in cancer and heart research
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painless dentistry psychiatry nursing care and modern drugs.
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All of these and more will be presented on your doctor's speaks.
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Your host for this series is Jack Reed Timmer coordinator of public service radio and TV
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programming. For the University of Illinois Medical Center campus and
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Champaign Urbana.
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This is Jack remembering another program that we do with faculty members from the universal and
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Medical Center campus in Chicago. Our guest today is Dr. William
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mentored professor and head of the departments of Obstetrics and Gynecology universe on II
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College of Medicine an obstetrician and gynecologist in chief at
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the universe I want to research an educational hospital's topic woman's
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special interest in cancer prevention. What specialists
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interest does the woman or do women today have in
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this particular area of cancer. What is it and what can they do about it.
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Well sir I just do quote a statistic or two.
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If a newborn male a new boy baby born
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today has approximately one hundred ninety chances in the
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thousand of. So coming from cancer
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but in a born female I was a hundred and thirty six chances by the thousand
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thirty six two hundred eight. Yes. Furthermore our
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breast and female genital tract cancer
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are second only to gastrointestinal cancer and liver cancer.
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Now remember they gastrointestinal and liver cancer occur in both sexes
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and breast and female reproductive operators.
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Cancer in the 1 6 0 0 0. So they I
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think they really do have particular interest in
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this disease.
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So what you're saying is that the woman's reproductive organs she really has
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well susceptible to this particular disease. Well yes they are.
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Why is this so and what kinds of cancer in women occur in the reproductive
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organs.
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Well reproductive organs breast and uterus and over
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a by their very nature are constantly undergoing
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changes in their cells. And wherever there is intense cellular activity
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there's always a chance for the growth of cancer. See cancer is
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like a criminal in the cellular. City of the body
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and the criminal throws off normal
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restraints of society and a cancer cell throws off normal
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growth restraints of the normal cell because cells in our body are constantly
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being started and living and then being
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sloughed off and wherever there's intensity in our activity as there is in
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the aptly active reproductive life of woman in utero and
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breast and ovary. There's bound to be cancer.
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This kind of a kind of paying a bleak picture here about the poor
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woman the fact that she's so susceptible to cancer and the problems of cancer because of
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her sex. What can she do about this.
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How can she be talked to recognize the early symptoms of cancer whether it be
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breast cancer uterine cancer whatever it might be.
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Well I think this is why one of the reasons I like this topic.
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One of the reasons why I think woman has a special interest in cancer
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and one of the reasons why I'm firmly of the opinion that she should
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know what there is to know.
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She should know the very early symptoms because it's
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only if she dies and that there is hope or if she
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delays. Until For example she gets pain but in time she has
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pain there in much hope for. But it's the only symptom she has to know
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for instance. Well now let's take the commonest cancer that I
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deal with which is cancer of the mouth of the womb. A woman
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who gets this started now in our mind to remember these are just a very very few cells there
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that are cancers and they've
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just barely made a slow 90s breakthrough a sore
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on the cervix. The woman was spot perhaps after do she
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perhaps after sexual intercourse.
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We call it contact spotting. Not every woman who does this has
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cancer but every woman who has cancer of the cervix certainly started this
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way. She must recognize this early symptom.
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On and of course we can't do anything about the woman
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unless she comes to us.
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Yes it's utterly impossible to treat this disease by remote control as to the woman
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to bring herself to the doctor. Well really now there is no other
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early symptom of cancer of the cervix.
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And if the woman comes to us then we have a very
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good chance of doing something. I want to inject something here. This is not
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entirely statistically correct but it is very good and I
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think dramatize is what I'm trying to say. If a woman
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who has cancer who spots after contact and
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goes immediately to the proper physician and gets the proper care
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she has very close to 100 percent chance of being alive and well
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5 years from now. So then again if a woman.
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Who has cancer and who has this early symptom of spotting
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goes to the proper physician and the proper
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things are immediately instituted. This woman has very
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close to 100 percent chance of being alive and well
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5 years from now. But but there's always a every day she
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delays she loses about 1 percent. Now that's the
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part that isn't quite true but it's so close to being true that if the woman just
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remembers that for every day's delay the chances drop 1 percent
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so that by end of about three and a third months she has virtually no
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chance of cure.
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But making a cure is five years. Five years is a miracle. Yes
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years. But the hope is there.
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The hope is there. A woman has got to recognize this
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and it isn't frank bleeding obviously a few bad cells on the mouth of the
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womb are going to cause a vicious hemorrhage. You know they are going
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to produce a little spotting and maybe they'll produce a very slight
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hardly a drop of blood on her panties. She must heed this if she does
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this she has a chance. Well wouldn't this.
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Coming to the area if she was seeing a physician regularly every six months within this
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or half an hour we're going to talk probably something about this I hope you'll ask me
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about these things a little later on.
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But my only point was in this fact that we're given information which
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is very good but many women may say well I'm not
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aware of what you just told me I know now because you told me but
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how do I know what to look for now we all hear about the seven danger signal Gentles of cancer.
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Well I want to let you have anything from a body. I went What does that mean. Yes
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well we tell them what I mean. Spotting you know there was a lot of blood a little
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spot of blood.
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This is a sign and if a woman hears it
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wonderful and if she doesn't every day she delays she's in
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more and more trouble.
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Let's talk about then about a test which
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is becoming very popular and I assume from what you and I have
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discussed earlier that this is really helped fantastically and this is the Pap smear Could you
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tell us about the pap smear.
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Yeah now I think before we start talking about
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the paps Mara I'd have to lay a little foundation here.
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Now cancer of the mouth of the womb cancer of the cervix for example
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doesn't just begin out of nowhere. Certain things happen.
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And probably the cellular
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change not probably We know that cellular change takes place
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in some of the cells of a woman who is ultimately going to develop
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cancer cellular to change takes place at least 10 years before she gets any
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spotting. Now the beauty of the pap smear and we call
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it pap because this man was happening a lot and that's too long a name to
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say so it's become pap all over the United States use it or this Smee they're
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unable us to recognize some of the cells that are sloughed
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off. Now pig skin to the hand for instance
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at the bottom of the skin. The cells grow then as
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they grow and push themselves toward the surface they flatten out a little bit
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and as they flatten out ultimately they're sucked off. Anybody
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who's been sick in bed for a long time knows that he gets gales on his heels.
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And this is exactly the thing the Saudis are exfoliate. Well by a
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very simple thing.
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Simply use a cotton swab or simply use
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a piece of wood a blue little like a
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tongue blade and don't scrape to get blood we're not after blood that this year
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is the task.
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But just scrape off a few of these surface cells and from the surface cells it
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is possible to recognize that some of the cells are bad.
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And this is a danger sign I want to caution any woman who hears this. Yes that
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under no circumstances is a she ever to be treated for cancer because of a pap smear.
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When you I say it again. A pap smear is not
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sufficient for an accurate diagnosis of cancer. PAP
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is the thing that gives the signal that leads us
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to this cancer is the first step. It's the first
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step. And a pap smear every year. In fact you ask about the Pap
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smear I'll make a very didactic statement. If every woman over
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25 in the United States got a pap smear
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every year we would eliminate cancer this early
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death from cancer of the cervix. That's a fantastic that's a fantastic
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statement sir but that is a true statement. And I think that
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wherever this has been applied it has been shown to be true.
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You know wiser to utilize what we have why we've got everything there is we don't have
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breakthroughs in order to. We can't always cure cancer of the
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mouth of the womb we usually can but the cure is pretty rough but we can
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prevent it if we get this pap smear. Now having got a positive
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pap smear and then the woman must have. What we call
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a little colon removed just around the mouth of the womb.
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Because that's where cancer of the mouth of the womb begins is around us a little comb.
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Or the right surrounding the central orifice of the
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opening. And then we make a tissue
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biopsy actually make microscopic
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preparations and study this tissue under the microscope. Then we can
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speedily tell whether there is just some cellular change in there which is not
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good or whether this is already going on. To be invasive
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cancer in an extraordinarily early stage. But in either event the chances of
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curing at that stage are actually are approximately 100 percent.
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You can ask about of the man was a pretty good percentage a matter of fact we done the records on a
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better than 100 patients on whom we have taken appropriate precautions in this preliminary
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stage. And not one patient has developed cancer.
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Very very encouraging to me and it is very very encouraging.
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Now this pastor can be downright in the physician's office I want to assure is not true or it is not a
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matter of fact they've been teaching some women and giving him kids to do it you know themselves.
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Oh yeah they do that position's I got to be a pretty
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sophisticated woman and of course this sort of thing no burgeon could do it
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and have to take a married woman or a woman who's had a child
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before she could be able to do this test herself but I don't think this is if physicians
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test I don't believe it's the patients day.
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Yeah and why not if you're going to go see a physician every six months or a year at the most. This should
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be part of the annual checkup for the woman. Yes. So there's no particular problem there I mean this should
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be done right there. Now let's talk about the uterus the room.
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Why does the uterus of the woman have to have more than one cancer type which
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could develop in it.
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You know possible Yeah that is a very strange thing that an organ like this should have at least two cancer
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This program has been transcribed using automated software tools, made possible through a collaboration between the American Archive of Public Broadcasting and Pop Up Archive. Please note that no automated transcription is perfect nor is it intended to replace human transcription labor. If you would like to contribute corrections to this transcript, please contact MITH at mith@umd.edu.