CNN —It was a first for actor Ryan Reynolds, who allowed a video crew to capture his colonoscopy screening on camera to raise awareness of the increase in colon cancer diagnoses among people under 50. The new video, made in partnership with the Colorectal Cancer Alliance and another colon cancer awareness organization, Lead From Behind, did not show the colonoscopy procedure itself, for either Reynolds or McElhenney. “I have a pretty little colon,” Couric said with a sleepy chuckle as she watched the video projection from the scope inside her colon. “You didn’t put the scope in yet, did you?” asked Couric, whose husband had died from colon cancer at age 42 in 1998. However, like Reynolds and McElhenney, most people are more heavily sedated and rarely wake up during a colonoscopy.

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