Andretti believes anyone who is 45 and older needs to have a colonoscopy. Health insurance policies and many doctors don’t recommend individuals have the procedure until they are 50.
“If your doctor tells you it’s not necessary or they give you Cologuard, then you need to get a different doctor,” Andretti stressed. “It’s not worth the risk.
“My younger sister had six precancerous polyps in her colon and she is 42 years old,” Andretti said. “My colon was fine, except it had this big massive tumor in it and I don’t know how that happened.”
Andretti’s kids are having colonoscopies, even though they are in their 20s. Andretti pays for the procedure because insurance companies won’t.
“I can guarantee that none of my kids are going to have colorectal cancer because they are going to be checked every five years whether anybody tells them they are going to be or not,” Andretti said. “I don’t care if you have to take a loan out on your house.
“It’s the only cancer that is preventable.”
Andretti was diagnosed with stage IV colon cancer in April 2017. Soon thereafter, he took to social media with the #CheckIt4Andretti campaign, encouraging people to get colonoscopies.
Andretti completed chemotherapy on Dec. 10. 2017, but he still had many surgeries following that. On May 29, 2018, he revealed the cancer had returned. That meant more treatment and more surgery.
The cancer went into remission, but on March 29, 2019, he gave the grim news that it had once again returned.
After several more rounds of chemotherapy, Andretti became part of a clinical trial on April 29.
Initially, the racing community rallied around Andretti’s cause.
“When something happens, right away everybody is on it and the community gets around it, but so many things have happened since and time passes,” he said. “Other things have happened and a lot of different things go on and there is no way you can expect people to be rallied around your cause and your cause alone.
“There are people I’ve never spent a lot of time with but have a huge amount of respect for like Dario Franchitti and Helio Castroneves,” Andretti noted. “Every time I see Helio, it doesn’t matter how huge the crowd is, he just has to see me, and he wants to sit and talk to me to see how I’m doing. He is the kind of guy that traps you to find out what is really going on.
“Dario Franchitti is the same. Guys like that are genuinely good guys. But you don’t expect that. I don’t expect them to still be running the #CheckIt4Andretti decals.
“Colorectal cancer does not have the fanfare of other cancers,” Andretti said. “It should be getting more and more awareness and backing, but it doesn’t. It’s the second largest killer for cancer. It’s not ‘The Thing.’”
“Does anybody know when Colorectal Cancer Month (March) is? They all know when Breast Cancer Month is, and I love it,” Andretti continued. “My mom and my sister both have breast cancer and they are both survivors because so much money has been raised.
“The momentum has waned,” he said. “I still get messages from people and a lot of support. At first, there was a big flood of people getting these done, when this all first happened. There was actually a waiting list in Indiana for people to get in. Now, it’s back to pleading for people to do this.
“It’s hard because people think they don’t need it.”