Professional Fire Fighters of Utah Pension Representative
Salt Lake City Fire Department Captain (Retired)
Get screened. Save your life. Spare your loved ones and your firefighter family too.
At 21, I was hired as a firefighter. I was required to have a full hiring physical and then annual physicals for the next 45 years as I continued to work in the fire service. I had routine cardiac checks, routine colonoscopies. I was examined for skin cancer, had my prostate checked. I always passed without a problem or any changes to my health. The Professional Firefighters of Utah provided me the opportunity to have a routine ultrasound cancer screening. I told them to let someone else have the appointment. After all, I felt great. But I was convinced to get screened with a reminder that I had years of firefighter exposures.
An hour or so after the exam, I was told to expect a phone call with the results. I answered. They had found cancer. The tumor had likely been there for years — big and growing but painless. They caught it just in time but late enough to take years from my life.
I still enjoy being alive. Even feeling the effects of treatments is better than feeling nothing. And I appreciate the good times even more than before. But my family appreciates that I had the chance to be screened the most. They would have perhaps blamed themselves for not having noticed what I didn’t notice either.
Get screened. Save your life. Spare your loved ones and your firefighter family too.