Comment by tjpnz
>Only thing that I'm doing differently is having blood tests done on an annual basis
Tumor markers? Did one once because it was a cheap add on to my annual medical. Which then led to a rather more expensive MRI (lucky for me it wasn't cancer). Genuinely curious if those tests have helped anyone here as a preventative measure.
No, just a standard test, so the typical parameters + glucose + cholesterol. On top of that liver function tests.
I'm aware that tumor markers have a significant false positive rate, so I wouldn't try that unless I had reason to.
A while ago I had a conversation with a person whose 3rd stage bowel cancer was detected because due to an unrelated reason they had a standard blood test done and it was wildly off in hemoglobin levels, so the doctors started investigating.
Eventually the surgeon cut out a significant part of their intestine, but the person lived, so they count that as a win.