Lori Oschefski doesn’t want others to make the same mistake she made.
But clearly many already have.
Across Simcoe-Muskoka, there have been approximately 40,000 fewer cancer screenings conducted during the pandemic than normally would have occurred. That’s a drop of nearly 50 per cent.
“Since the start of the pandemic there’s been a deficit in cancer screenings, which is colorectal, breast and ovarian cancers,” said Aaron Lutes, executive director of Gilda’s Club Simcoe Muskoka, which provides assistance to people who are diagnosed with cancer. “It’s concerning, it’s highly concerning.
“I call it our post-pandemic crisis. It’s like a forest fire that’s just starting to build and grow and grow and grow," he added. "Somehow, we need to fight this. We need screenings to happen. We need people to really pay attention to this.”
Mathematically, those missed screenings could translate into 140 cancer diagnoses that may have been missed locally.
Oschefski was one of them. And then she wasn’t.
The Barrie dental hygienist who works in Bradford had been having regular breast screenings every two years, but decided not to go last August when the next opportunity came up.
“Like a lot of people, I decided I didn’t want to go,” she told BarrieToday. “I wasn’t interested in being out in public more than I had to. And since I’ve never had any serious trouble… I just didn’t think it would hurt to put it off.
“So I declined an appointment for a mammogram.”
Oschefski then received a call from her doctor’s office urging her to get the test. She said she would, but really didn’t have any intention of following it up.
The appointment was made for December and she went in.
Then came the call back and on Christmas Eve, Oschefski was having an ultrasound and a biopsy done.
“I didn’t hear anything until about Jan. 8. That’s when my doctor’s office called to tell me that they had found cancer,” she said.
That was followed by two weeks of “brutal” waiting to see the general surgeon when she learned that she had Stage 0 to Stage 1, so it was found at a very early stage.
“Three days later, I was in surgery,” she said, which was followed by radiation, but testing determined that chemotherapy wasn’t necessary.
Oschefski, who said she feels like she’s been given a second chance at life and her health, is now encouraging others to stay on top of their screenings.
“Health-care systems across Ontario and the world has been significantly impacted by COVID-19 and one area that has been most significantly impacted would include preventative care, like cancer screening,” said Mark Unwin, manager of prevention, screening, patient and family support for the Simcoe Muskoka Regional Cancer Program.
Ontario has three organized programs for breast, colon and cervical screening. Testing for all three has dropped, he said.
During the first wave of the pandemic, the programs were put on hold for roughly three months, but they failed to reach full volume when they were restored.
“There was some hesitancy amongst some people to interact with the health-care system because of the pandemic and everything we were going through,” said Unwin. “We saw that in the second wave.”
Testing has since recovered to pre-pandemic levels, but there is now an emphasis to make up for lost time. The hours of operation for mammography have been extended to accommodate more people and do more screenings than before the pandemic.
“When we look at the data provincially, it shows that we’re one of the sites, provincially in Ontario that is doing the most right now to get caught up,” Unwin said. “It is important to get caught up on your cancer screening and it’s safe to come and interact with the health-care system.”
Cervical cancer is almost always preventable, he said, and all three screening tests can catch the signs of cancer before it starts.
There is also a greater likelihood of recovery from colon cancer when it is diagnosed early. Ontarians aged 50 to 74 can get a free, at-home fecal test through a family physician or nurse practitioner.
Breast cancer is the most common cancer among women, affecting one in eight. More people survive breast cancer than almost any other type of cancer, Unwin added.
The difference in the number of fecal tests for colon cancer between the pandemic and pre-pandemic is 7,337 — representing a drop of about 45 per cent. There were 18,432 fewer Pap tests done for cervical cancer, representing a drop of about 50 per cent. Mammography breast cancer testing was down by 14,785 tests — or 47 per cent.
Based on the historical rate of how often a screening test does come back positive, Unwin projects that may have resulted in 142 cancer diagnoses that have been missed locally — 16 colorectal cancer cases, 71 breast cancer cases and 53 cervical pre-cancerous cases.
Pap tests are done at family doctors' offices who also order the fecal tests for colon cancer, which are mailed to the patient’s home and there are seven mammography sites in the region — Barrie, Huntsville, Bracebridge, Midland, Collingwood and Orillia, which has two locations.
Over at Gilda’s Club, Lutes is seeing an unexplained jump in the number of people looking to access its services across the region.
“Over the course of the last two and a bit months, I would say we’ve seen upwards of a five-fold increase in calls for support,” he said.
Lutes points to the progress that has been made in cancer research in recent the decades and the difference screenings have made.
In 1977, when Terry Fox was diagnosed, which led to his national Marathon of Hope, the cancer survival rate was less than five per cent.
“Now it’s more than 80 per cent because we have screening, we have education, we have opportunities to be able to find it earlier. If you don’t find it early enough, you don’t have treatment options, you have poor outcomes," Lutes said.
The emphasis now is restoring those volumes and working through the backlog and Unwin says it’s safe to return to the health-care system for these appointments.
The Royal Victoria Regional Health Centre (RVH) cancer centre in Barrie has a hotline available for people to access testing and information they need by calling 1-866-608-6910.
