Coco the Colossal Colon is coming to Southwest Florida from May 12th through the 17th.

Molly McMaster created coco to help bring awareness to colon cancer. She was diagnosed with the disease on her 23rd birthday back in 1999. Oncology care specialist Laurie Wise explains "Coco the Colossal Colon is a 40-ft long replica of a human colon through which people, the public can crawl through or look through in special little windows that they have in the side to recognize disease in the bowel."

Gastroenterologist Suresh Chavakula says that Coco is designed to let everyone know that it's ok to talk about colon cancer. It was also designed as an educational tool to show how certain diseases can affect the colon. "This is going to bring it out into the open so people don't feel it's so bad when they're actually walking through it and seeing all the bad things that can be in their colon."

Colorectal Surgeon Janette Gaw, M.D. says that "It's done in such an almost kind of like childlike way you know, going, walking through the colon finding all these lesions. It's not only for colorectal cancer but there are people with inflammatory bowel disease and things like that."

To visit Coco at the Community Health Care Center Auditorium you can call 239-277-2951 for more information. Teachers you may want to bring your students.

Local physicians will also be giving lecturers about certain conditions during Coco's visit so you may want to check the schedule and arrange your visit to Coco around a topic you're interested in learning more about, just log on to www.swfrmc.com