re: How can you catch cancer in its early stage of development?

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MRI led to me getting a medivac flight to Seattle. They had a team of surgeons waiting but found out when I got there that the imaging was not read correctly.

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Happens often. Glad you had good clinicians to look at the big picture.

Best of luck with your health. I enjoy your posts/perspective.

I keep seeing so many suggestions, while all good (blood work, MRI, PET Scan, etc..) all need medical necessity....Unless you have $1M laying around to pay for crazy tests all of the time. Having a good primary care physician (PCP) that knows what he/she is doing and will pay attention to your concerns is key. There is not 1 thing that will catch cancer early/late/ever. I had a cough which brought me to the doctor, which is not a symptom of the cancer I have. My PCP was a joke and it took us a little while to figure it out...but bottom line was that I only went to the doc when I felt sick. I was 29 years old and wasn't worried about this stuff.

Do what you have to do or what you feel is right, but walking into the doctor's office and saying I want (bloodwork, MRI, PET, 2 whiskies and cocaine) is not going to get you anything other than the doc racking up your max out of pocket.

I stand by finding the best PCP to put you on the best proven prevention plan that is available. A lot of them are right, it is luck (bad or good). But leave the science portion to the professionals.

They'll get the right tests run that will likely include a lot of what was suggested. But again, you do you.

Pet scans for everyone