Can't stop worrying that I'm about to die of bowel cancer

[LunarCoffee]

Also, when I pull my thirteenth eyelash from left at my left eye, I feel sharp pain, while when I pull my thirteenth eyelash from left at my right eye, there is no pain. There is probably a tumour in the base of my thirteenth eyelash from left at left eye.

Just because it's completely illogical doesn't mean that I still can't worry about it. That's why I'm here.

Also, I feel a bit more bloated and colder around the abdomen with each day, which kind of is cementing my fear.

[Fishmanpa]

Just because it's completely illogical doesn't mean that I still can't worry about it. That's why I'm here.

It doesn't mean you still can't worry about it but why, when it's 100% irrational and you don't have cancer of any kind, would you want to worry about it?
You're literally fighting every fact and reason you don't have it and spending your time posting here trying to convince others you have cancer.

Finally, you're a child. You should be talking to your parents and asking for help as opposed to strangers on the internet.

Positive thoughts

[Andrash]

Just because it's completely illogical doesn't mean that I still can't worry about it. That's why I'm here.

And that's why we are all trying to help you, exactly by using logic to dispel your fears. Here are the simple facts:

1. There are virtually no recorded cases of CRC at age 13 so if you had it you would be a medical miracle - FACT.
2. Anxiety will bring a lot of PHYSICAL symptoms that mimic actual diseases and therefore fuel your fears. The more you concentrate on your stomach the more symptoms you will experience - FACT.
3. Considering your age, you really need to discuss this with your parents, as many times as it takes, and you together should find a way to get rid of health anxiety -FACT.
4. You are 13 and at a very sensitive age - you are slowly ceasing to be a boy and starting to be a man. It is a challenging stage of life for everyone and without anxiety - with anxiety it can turn into a living hell - FACT.

So now it is your choice - you and your family can take necessary steps and reasonably quickly cure the ONLY illness you have - and that is health anxiety. Or you can continue believing you have one cancer (bowel) then another...then yet another...then ALS...and so on, until your mind becomes a total mess.

A time for choosing - to quote Ronald Reagan. Be better, or spiral further. I think the choice is easy.

[jray23]

You've actually answered your own questions with something you've said earlier in this thread:

Man, the mind is a crazy thing.

It really can make us think some really crazy, illogical stuff, and convince us that it is actually somehow correct! Have you seen some of the other threads here? People have thought they got rabies without being bitten, brain-eating amoebas in areas that they are impossible to live in, and of course many illogical cancer concerns.

I've feared some pretty longshot possibilities myself such as sudden cardiac event despite being a healthy guy in my 30s with no risk factors. This is what the anxious mind does to us. The good news is, as FishmanPA pointed out, that we can retrain our minds! Trust the doctor's evaluation, and ask him/her questions if you must, but ultimately trust it, and I encourage you to take advantage of those free sessions or perhaps go to a school counselor.


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[LunarCoffee]

Yeeeeeahh, y'all are right. But thanks for all the stuff, I guess. For the past few hours I've actually felt pretty good, not anxious at all, really. Everything here has a logical explanation. I'm not sure if my brain has formed a habit out of worrying about things, but I will put the stuff in those free booklets to use.

---------- Post added at 23:34 ---------- Previous post was at 20:42 ----------

So yeah, the fact that I've had this same constant feeling for over a month and have not seen even one bit of fresh blood in my stool (apparently in around 80% of all cases) contradicts my belief that the tumor is blocking my rectum, causing difficulty passing gas/stool, as the tumor would certainly bleed at that point, even if it was a little bit.

If the abdominal pain I had was cancer, it'd be constant, and really bad. Besides that, none of it is really near my rectum anyhow (though I think you can't feel pain in the rectum).

The "weight loss" is something I'm still kinda unsure of, but that can be attributed to a not so great diet (I'm home alone for half the day so I just usually have a frozen pizza for lunch), being in a growth spurt right now, and being anxious.

The bloating is probably a mix of diet choices, and it hasn't really lasted for more than a week at a time (and that was when I was increasing my fiber). The bloating I have right now is now mostly perceived, my abdomen is quite flat.

Besides that, I only have one symptom, the one that started this all: the tenesmus. At this point, I don't think it's all anxiety. As someone has previously mentioned, it could be internal hemorrhoids, and when I looked up hemorrhoids, all the sites with a specific list of symptoms said that they had no symptoms usually, but could also have painless bleeding and/or a feeling of incomplete evacuation. Also, my family has a history of hemorrhoids, so that's a thing. In fact, my dad just got some surgically removed.

Now, considering there would be 5 cases of CRC in Canada (extrapolating from UK data) in the 10-14 age group a year, and that RC accounts for roughly 20% of those cases in the age group, that means that 1 person would get RC a year. Tack on the fact that no case study I've looked at reports tenesmus and that 80% of RC cases cause bleeding, and that becomes somewhere around one 10-14 year old every 5-50 years (no case reports tenesmus, but that may have been mistake for constipation, hence the huge range. Notice how the lower end is still 5 years, though) that presents with only tenesmus with occasional pain. That's literally, what, 1 in 200-2000 million? Damn. Even if we take the base count of 5, that's still 7x less than the chance of any person of the population to develop CJD, and many times more likely to be killed by lightning. Also, according to https://what-if.xkcd.com/55/ (xkcd is great btw), the chance of any 10-14 year old developing CRC is almost 200x less than the chance of calling someone and saying "bless you" right after they sneezed, and roughly on par with the chance of calling someone who wrote an article on sneezing that same day. (I don't care if it's probably inaccurate, it's still weird)

Typing this and thinking of it makes me feel really stupid, even with some pretty bad incompleteness right now. Still get the occaisional chill when I think "what if" though.

EDIT: apparently the UK cancer research incidence data was actually for 2013-2015, so that chance is now 1 in 400-4000 million or 1 in 600-6000 million depending on whether or not 2015 is included.

EDIT 2: ok I was wrong it's the average number of cases across all the years. But there was another thing that said something like only 158 cases were reported (assuming worldwide) from January 1973 to December 2005, which is roughly 5 cases a year worldwide, or less than 1 in 1 freaking billion chance for the world population. The increase is probably due to factors such as diet changes and child obesity, and possibly some other things, so perhaps that is the figure I should be using.

[LunarCoffee]

Oh, great. Here comes constant appetite loss and a feeling that there's something in my throat near my chest area that's ready to just burst out of my mouth as vomit or something. Also, the bloating hasn't gone yet. I'm now constipated, but that can be explained by me not drinking enough water for 2 days

[Jack4440]

You're a 13 year old lad, I was tempted to stop reading at that as the chances are non existent. It sounds to me like IBS and constipation.
CBT and talking therapy is what you need.

[LunarCoffee]

You're a 13 year old lad, I was tempted to stop reading at that as the chances are non existent. It sounds to me like IBS and constipation.
CBT and talking therapy is what you need.

True, definitely true. I'm slowly getting better as I've started catching myself in unhelpful habits. The chances are pretty non-existent, but guess that's me right now.

[LunarCoffee]

OK, so for the past few weeks whenever I'd have a movement, the last bits of stool I'd pass would feel as if it were forcing it's way out of a really thin slit, and was, as expected, thin looking but still wide.

This is really worrying me because I feel like this is exactly what'd happen with a rectal tumor, and I'm practically waiting for the day I get really bad pain or I start bleeding and await my death. It feels really real now, and I can't concentrate on anything at all now. Please reply

[Fishmanpa]

You communicate brilliantly via the written word for a 13 year old.

Positive thoughts