Couric’s Crusade Is a True TV Public Service

Now that was great television.

NBC’s “ER” is a real nice medical show. “Chicago Hope” and “City of Angels” as well, on CBS. But here was one with everything: information that was absolutely crucial, drama that was real and believable, pictures that were intimate and arresting. And oh yes. . . .

Katie Couric’s intestine.

Arguably the most important message on TV this week has come not from a political candidate but from NBC’s “Today” program, where co-host Couric’s potential life-saving five-morning series, “Confronting Colon Cancer,” was punctuated Tuesday by a telecast of her own videotaped colonoscopy.

Colonwhat?

Colonoscopy. Considered the most effective test for colon cancer, the procedure consists of a doctor observing the colon by using a long, flexible tube with an illuminating camera mounted on the end as the live pictures are beamed onto TV monitor that the mildly sedated patient can watch.

“My pretty little colon,” Couric cooed. What egos these TV people have.

It’s no news when TV news personalities build stories or series around their own recovery from illness ranging from breast cancer to heart disease, often with good intent, but rarely in depth and just about always connected to a ratings period. They’ve been doing it for years, knowing that triumph over affliction sells as much in news as in TV movies.

This is not a ratings period, though. And there was nothing even remotely opportunistic or Nielsenesque about what Couric and her colon went through. Nor this week has she fronted a superficial gimmick, as did Deborah Norville, the former “Today” co-host, and now “Inside Edition” anchor, when spending a few nights in a jail cell last month, just to get the hang of the place for the camera following her around.

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Amid the usual topical clutter of “Today,” Couric is offering a public service, period! Her agenda is simple: Spread the word about colon cancer and urge people to get screened for this disease. Though nearly always curable, it caused a reported 56,600 deaths in 1999, surely the overwhelming bulk of them avoidable.

Catch it in time, say cancer experts, and you beat it.

Couric understands the peril first-hand because her husband, NBC legal analyst, Jay Monahan, did not catch it in time. On Jan. 24, 1998, he died of colon cancer that wasn’t detected until it had spread to his liver. He was just 42.

Although Couric had no symptom or family history of colon cancer, she believed she couldn’t urge others to be screened for the disease until she was screened. Exposing her colon to the world has personalized the process and made her a more effective advocate.

Time for the colonoscope--think long snake--which Couric demonstrated for viewers. It’s inserted up the You Know What, but (take it from yours truly, who knows from experience) with just a mild sedative, the discomfort is minimal.

The worst part, shown by Couric from her kitchen the night before, is having to gulp down at intervals a huge container of special liquid meant, as they say, to clean you out in advance of the procedure. Yikes!

Next morning, Couric had her date with Dr. Moshe Shike of Memorial Sloan-Kettering hospital. After Couric was prepped for the colonoscopy, there it was on the screen--ooooh, ick--as she watched along with Shike, the nurses and the “Today” camera crew. “You’re going to feel a cramp there now, going around the bend,” the doctor said at one point.

“So far,” Couric noted a bit later, “I’m looking pretty clean, huh?” As a whistle, it turned out. No polyps of any kind, no inflammation, no cancer, no nothing.

This is Couric’s second series on colon cancer, the first coming in 1998 after her husband’s death. The current series has included much more than Couric’s colonoscopy. She began the week, for example, by interviewing a man whose life was saved by the discovery of a cancerous polyp. During that conversation, Couric noted other detection options, including the flexible sigmoidoscopy, a less thorough screening that examines just the lower third of the colon and can be done in a doctor’s office.

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Wednesday brought Couric’s gastrospeak with doctors about the small risks involved in having a colonoscopy and--a very important point to make--the reluctance of most insurance carriers to pay for one if there are no symptoms or family history. That followed her talk with brothers Greg and John Zuroski about the latter’s colon cancer being diagnosed just three months after Greg’s own colonoscopy was televised as part of that “Today” series in 1998.

On Thursday, Couric covered the myth that only males in their golden oldies have this disease, which is said to trail only lung cancer in cancer fatalities. “You get your mammograms, you get your pap smears, why don’t you get tested for colon cancer?” she preached to women. And today she was scheduled to focus on prevention and treatment largely through the experience of one patient’s herculean efforts to save his life and the lives of others.

Looming largest, though, will always be Tuesday’s segment with the popular, widely admired Couric on the slab, marquee time that earned her even more respect as well as the cover of this week’s Time magazine.

As we say in news biz: Lights, cameras, colon.

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Howard Rosenberg’s column appears Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. He can be contacted via e-mail at calendar.letters@latimes.com.