'I Kept My Colon'

“I went in for a routine colonoscopy, but the doctor was unable to remove a certain polyp, so they sent me to a surgeon who wanted to remove one-third of my colon,” recalls 64-year-old Linda Kama’ila, who immediately looked for a second opinion. “I would have been out of work for six weeks with two major surgeries. I try really hard to stay healthy, and being out of work for that long, with lifelong consequences, was really concerning. Online, I saw that UCLA Health offered a mucosal resection procedure. Dr. Danny Issa offered this outpatient procedure, and he got the benign polyp out. It was a great success, and I got to keep all my functioning. It was all done in two afternoons. UCLA Health’s quality can’t be beat because the staff is research oriented. Dr. Issa’s work, and he’s still publishing, shows that when there’s a history of benign polyps, there isn’t always a reason to do a major surgery as if the polyp is cancer. I would have lost one-third of my colon for something that was not malignant. I’m so grateful to UCLA Health. It couldn’t have been a better experience.”