Posters, adverts, advice: A Moan!

[darinfan]

Hey all, I haven't been kicking around here lately as thing, thankfully, have been better for me recently with regards to health anxiety. A bit of a flare-up this week as a result of blood being found where you don't want it, but other than that, things have been good.

However, the finding of blood when I went to the loo has made it even more clear to me that often the posters, advice we are given, and adverts on the telly telling us to go the doctors if X, Y or Z happens because it could be a fatal disease might be saving some lives, but are also ruining others.

Am I the only one thinking this?

We have an obsessive condition, and we're being encouraged to become obsessed about our bowel movements, or a cough, or a spot that's turned a bit weird. I'm not saying the public shouldn't be educated that they should check for such things or that we should be aware of things to look for, but surely there must be a better way of doing it - or a more responsible way of doing it.

I will give my own example. Jan 29th, went to the loo. Drop of blood smeared on one piece of what I had done. Same thing a week later. Same thing two weeks later. That's it. I go to the loo two or three times a day, so in five weeks that's about 5 drops of blood in about 80 or 90 bowel movements.

The problem here is that we are told to check our stools to look for blood. In fact, it is drilled into us to do so. But, other than that, the advice is rather vague. How often are we meant to check it? Every movement? Every day? Every week? If every week then I'd probably not have noticed the damned blood in the first place and saved myself a load of worry! But there's no advice or guidelines on this - just make sure you check it! And how much blood is a worry? One drop? Five drops? Blood on one piece of stool? Blood on every piece of stool? If it happens once? If it happens for three days in a row? Do we get that sort of useful advice? Nope.

Now, I realise these are minute long infomercials or A4 posters, and not full-length documentaries or books on the subject, but it seems to me that such things are making as many people ill as they are making them better! In a society where we are often mocked for having health anxiety, we are bombarded (especially on daytime TV) with things to obsess and worry over.

Is it just me who feels this, or are other people thinking the same thing?

[MyNameIsTerry]

Yes and no.

I don't suffer with HA issues but I do have GAD & OCD so how about I give you an example where you can tell me that the issue is with my perception, not what is being presented?

War. When my GAD was bad I would find big news like war, civil unrest, etc a trigger. This meant the news was a trigger for me. There is often some war or civil unrest somewhere in the world and at some point it is followed by the news. To the average non anxiety person, would it bother them? No. They would think it is bad, may be concerned but that's as far as it goes because their automatic rationalisation kicks in e.g. 'it's on the other side of the world', 'it's a small unrest and won't impact on the UK', 'if we need to stop it reaching us we have a government to send out the troops', 'governments are always working together to reduce risks against their countries and we employ many people to watch over these issues and sort them out so I can go to work tomorrow, do my shopping and go down the pub on Friday night'.

Yet my thoughts differed to this. Largely my anxiety was about the change involved and how that would impact on my strict daily routines from my OCD. But I can draw the same comparison to an event at home that would mean such a big shift, like a loved one going into hospital.

So, is reporting on war bad? Sure, it can be excessive and even sensationalised although the government will keep an eye on them to prevent the latter due to causing panic.

That's just me, there are others who have talked about war reporting, terrorist events, etc on the GAD board. What about action movies? At one point I was so sensitised that they would affect me too. Medical programmes are a big no no for many. What else is a trigger for someone somewhere? Do we stop them all?

So, when I see the issue of HA and these health campaigns, it's a similar issue only that how you feel about them was how I felt about my different media triggers. This is why a small section of the population with HA based anxiety issues cannot dictate policy for the whole because otherwise they would have to do the same for every small section under the same circumstances and the campaigns would be so watered down as to become pointless.

They are vague and somewhat misleading in my opinion. We see someone starting to notice the signs and heading to their GP. We don't see the outcome of that assessment so there are two conclusions that can be drawn - 1) it was cancer and 2) it was something else. Something else could be bad, cancer isn't the only bad thing out there by far BUT it could easily be something minor that GP's see daily and treat with 100% success.

We basically get an advert that says:

'Blood in your poo may be a sign of CANCER...but it may not it could be something else so just best to get your GP to check it out.'

Not enough information is put there because it's a scattergun scare tactic aimed at getting people into GP's to be "safe no sorry".

There was one last year and one of the statements in the NHS blurb was something like 'have you had wind for weeks?' Well, that could be many things as a lot of us on here know with anxiety, certainly those with IBS! They were criticised for this in the media I seem to recall.

A few weeks back one hospital was reported as missing it's cancer screening targets very badly. They gave two reasons for this and one was - cancer awareness campaigns. So, this makes me think that since the cancer rates aren't spiralling out of control at this hospital, a lot more people than they expected are going in there for tests. But they can't just walk in there - their GP has to refer them for tests. So, are GP's now sending far too many patients for pointless tests because "it's better to be safe, not sorry?". Since GP's are currently complaining about their workloads and also agreeing that hospitals are overrun perhaps they should look at themselves here. I wouldn't be surprised if this becomes a known problem in future years but the NHS are masters off covering things up and since it's their campaigning that could be leading to this, they have a big interest in not letting this get out. I was very surprised to see this statement by a hospital and it made me wonder if we will now start hearing more from them.

---------- Post added at 05:26 ---------- Previous post was at 05:23 ----------


The problem here is that we are told to check our stools to look for blood. In fact, it is drilled into us to do so. But, other than that, the advice is rather vague. How often are we meant to check it? Every movement? Every day? Every week? If every week then I'd probably not have noticed the damned blood in the first place and saved myself a load of worry! But there's no advice or guidelines on this - just make sure you check it! And how much blood is a worry? One drop? Five drops? Blood on one piece of stool? Blood on every piece of stool? If it happens once? If it happens for three days in a row? Do we get that sort of useful advice? Nope.

You are absolutely right about the lack of advice. I take it that you don't "check", you just "keep an eye out". It's not about performing a periodic check once every Sunday, it's about noticing before you flush or as you are wiping. That's all I would do and like I said, I have no HA issues.

How much blood is a crucial question. Queue the guy on the advert 'there was quite a lot of blood and it's very loose'. So, is it really 'blood in your poo' or is it 'a lot of blood of a certain colour'?

I wonder just how many thousands of people have been to their GP after finding a few streaks on the toilet paper to find it is roids?!

[cerridwen]

I found I had roids, after a mercy dash to GP with a blood streaked tissue. For those of us with HA I think we have lost our judgment on what it is best to report to the GP and what isn't.
My mum was a frequent visitor to her GP with stomach upsets (due to Metformin treatment for diabetes), rib pain, arthritis in the knees..........unfortunately she deliberately ignored the big 'red flag' symptom which was a bloody discharge from her nipple and ended up dying of breast cancer five years later. No GP in the world would have been able to spot that unmentioned symptom from all the other extraneous symptoms she was constantly seeing him with.
Any symptom you are unsure of, particularly if it's bloody, see the b***dy GP! Is what I say.........
I am going cold turkey at the moment, seeing GP with 'red flag' symptoms (like blood on the loo paper) and all symptoms that fail to clear up after one week. Those are my guidelines and so far it's working, though anxiety is high. Getting better though.
C X

[darinfan]

Terry, I'm certainly not saying that these kinds of campaigns should be built around HA sufferers but, as you say in your final section, the advice and info given is far too vague to be of use either to HA sufferers (and they could factor that in) or GPs who are probably now inundated with people going to see them because they've had the bejesus scared out of them!

[MyNameIsTerry]

NHS Choices outlines a load of possibilities but they keep saying any blood should be checked out. The trouble with saying this is that things can change and a diagnosis of roids years ago isn't necessarily going to remain the same in everyone. I've had roids for nearly 20 years and they come and go. So, by this logic I should have been to my GP probably 40+ times even though I know it's roids!

The problem seems to be that early stage bowel cancer can present as blood without any other symptoms. So, they can't do any more than what is in the advert with this particular issue but that does mean everyone seeing their GP even when they have signs of obvious problems like roids e.g. itchiness, soreness, etc. So, are the NHS making things harder here?

The NHS is at odds with itself. The bosses want different things to the troops. The GP's keep complaining about being so busy with elderly care, something they should be doing and should never have been taken away from them. Wasn't the BMA talking about boycotting the elderly in care homes recently? There was some press over this and I saw some GP's local to me refusing to accept this, but an region not far away considering it. Yet we are supposed to be rushing to our GP's due to a speck of blood when some additional knowledge would help steer it to something else? It doesn't make sense to me.

[darinfan]

That's about it. It's almost as if these campaigns have decided to give you the most useless amount of information possible. Not enough for people to gauge what a sensible move might be, and too much for them not to worry!

[LilGsMama]

I work in a surgery and am not fond when the leaflets and posters in the waiting room need putting out/sorting/tidying etc.. as I have to see them! I can hardly start shouting out to the patients "OI! Put those back where you found them or it will send me Off On One" .. Tempting but not ideal :roflmao: