Does anyone else hate it when you're told that really vague symptoms could be cancer?

[BetheRugbyball]

I'm talking about those news stories and the Facebook posts that tell the tale of a young and healthy person being diagnosed with something terminal. Then they go on to list the horribly vague symptoms to watch out for.

Things like bloating, feeling 'run down' and sudden changes in bowel habits are apparently symptoms of a million types of cancer. Even though digestive systems are incredibly sensitive anyway and anxiety plays hell with you body. These stories used to terrify me but now they make me angry for some reason, what are they hoping to achieve? I totally understand wanting to raise awareness, but they never mention that's it's rare in young people or that the symptoms are severe and not just passing, and they seem to want people to panic.

Charities did something similar in school, I often joke that I grew up in the age of cancer awareness because of all the talks and fundraisers I've been roped into. I remember my German teacher, whose father sadly died of bowel cancer, she stood up in front of a hall of kids and began listing all these banal symptoms that mean you need to see your doctor and that you probably have it. BOOM, every kid is convinced they have cancer. Which only led to total avoidance of the issue, it caused so much panic on the school field you have no idea!

It just sends droves of people to their GP's, only to be told that there is nothing wrong. Which often makes people think that their doctor's made a mistake. Not to mention the despair these stories can cause.

Sorry, I know I'm being a brat but needed to rant. Not sure if anyone else feels the same way.

:blush:

[Aleman200]

I completely agree! This has driven my Health Anxiety to the point of breaking. I'm so wholly convinced i have Stomach Cancer because of all the stupid vague symptoms i've heard about that i now can't go a day without panicking. (Despite the fact my 5 week long persistent stomach ache could be anything else). I get that they need to raise awareness of it. But it's still infuriating. Everywhere you turn now it's cancer this and cancer that. It's genuinely terrifying.

[BetheRugbyball]

Stomach issues are the worst! My house mate had persistent stomach ache (she wasn't even worried, I would have been catatonic!) I was really worried for her, turns out she has a pretty standard digestive issue easily controlled with antibiotics. If that was me I would have given serious though to just killing myself.

The worst ones are the ''I went to the doctor with bloating and it turned out to be stage unholy cancer'' OH COME ON

[Aleman200]

I'm with you on that one.

It's stuff like "I was in the best shape of my life, i went to the doctors for some excess gas and it turns out i had Stage 299823938 Bowel Cancer"

Thank you very much media. That's really what i needed.

[CJP1017]

I feel your frustration! For the last couple of months I have been fearing bowel cancer after my bowel movements changed. I had a colonscopy last week which found nothing but a small hemorrhoid. Doctor thinks it was anxiety and IBS causing the change

[Lifelonganxiety!]

With regards to what they are hoping to achieve it's quite simple. They want you to click on their link which generates income for them. Wouldn't work if the story wasn't a shocker so they have to use the most extreme cases.

Just don't click!

[BetheRugbyball]

Omg the bowel ones are annoying, habits change all the time! Drinking more water than you normally do in a day or being slightly stressed over a deadline can cause mad changes. And IBS is so common! And harmless! Aaargh, I suppose the scare mongering articles gain the most readers though.

I mean, with a title like 'TEEN HAD BROKEN FINGERNAIL THAT TURNED OUT TO BE TERMINAL CANCER' who isn't going to click that?!?!

[MyNameIsTerry]

But was the article fact? If it is fact, the person went through that regardless of the dubious ways in which it may be shown to get a click through.

Less common and rare things do happen, this is where the media latch on as it sells. What would be the point of them saying "another person has a cold shocker"? That's just the media and it's an environmental factor that you cannot change, only accept and adjust to. And by adjust, I don't mean avoid them as that's not healthy long term with anxiety either since you can't avoid things for life.

I wouldn't click on it if I was interested.

There should be balance i.e. not the scaremongering of that teacher who really should have known better! It can be tricky though because of you take the "blood in your poo" one as an example, read what the NHS say. Blood alone can be a sign. The thing is, a GP isn't stupid and won't send someone off for cancer testing (or shouldn't) when they question the patient to find out if they have had constipation and have been straining hence do a roids examination instead.

I've had roids for nearly 20 years but how can I say 100% that any of the times I've had a spec of blood on the paper that it may not also be cancer? I can't. But I'm not going to run to my GP 10 times a year to waste their time either.

It's a scattergun approach. My local hospital failed it's breast cancer screening targets for a second time recently. In their press statement they quoted two reasons for this and one breast cancer awareness campaigns. I thought that was brave of them since it's the NHS promoting that. So, maybe we will see more opening up about how these campaigns are hurting their services? Although we should wonder why because it takes a GP to refer us. So, why exactly are testing referrals increasing if cancer isn't? Because GP's are acting like solicitors to cover their backs, maybe?

But I think regardless of a scaremongering strapline, you need to remember the person on the end of that who suffered. I have someone in my life who's mother has been diagnosed with something rare for her lifestyle and one day she will become one of those statistics as she is terminal. Months before, she was fine. I realise this could be triggering for some of you but you need to remember the other side too, I think.

[mnaha]

But was the article fact? If it is fact, the person went through that regardless of the dubious ways in which it may be shown to get a click through.

Less common and rare things do happen, this is where the media latch on as it sells. What would be the point of them saying "another person has a cold shocker"? That's just the media and it's an environmental factor that you cannot change, only accept and adjust to. And by adjust, I don't mean avoid them as that's not healthy long term with anxiety either since you can't avoid things for life.

I wouldn't click on it if I was interested.

There should be balance i.e. not the scaremongering of that teacher who really should have known better! It can be tricky though because of you take the "blood in your poo" one as an example, read what the NHS say. Blood alone can be a sign. The thing is, a GP isn't stupid and won't send someone off for cancer testing (or shouldn't) when they question the patient to find out if they have had constipation and have been straining hence do a roids examination instead.

I've had roids for nearly 20 years but how can I say 100% that any of the times I've had a spec of blood on the paper that it may not also be cancer? I can't. But I'm not going to run to my GP 10 times a year to waste their time either.

It's a scattergun approach. My local hospital failed it's breast cancer screening targets for a second time recently. In their press statement they quoted two reasons for this and one breast cancer awareness campaigns. I thought that was brave of them since it's the NHS promoting that. So, maybe we will see more opening up about how these campaigns are hurting their services? Although we should wonder why because it takes a GP to refer us. So, why exactly are testing referrals increasing if cancer isn't? Because GP's are acting like solicitors to cover their backs, maybe?

But I think regardless of a scaremongering strapline, you need to remember the person on the end of that who suffered. I have someone in my life who's mother has been diagnosed with something rare for her lifestyle and one day she will become one of those statistics as she is terminal. Months before, she was fine. I realise this could be triggering for some of you but you need to remember the other side too, I think.
:yesyes::yesyes::yesyes::yesyes::yesyes::yesyes::y esyes::yesyes::yesyes::yesyes::yesyes::yesyes::yes yes:

[androidz]

I'm going to take this opportunity to rant about this a little bit and get it off my chest.

It's simple, the media uses that super rare exception of a young healthy person diagnosed with terminal illnesses precisely because it is RARE and they want to attract views and traffic towards their articles to earn MONEY.

Those fear mongering *******s don't really care about awareness or your health or anybodies health, they just care about their wallet and they're willing to try to scare people to earn easy cash. Let's put pancreatic cancer as an example, which is a typical thing we see in this forum and others. What kind of awareness do 25 year olds need for pancreatic cancer? People that age shouldn't be freaking worrying about getting cancers, they should be worrying about their studies, their future professional life, and enjoying life in general. It's so rare that it's stupid to use the awareness excuse to write those fear mongering articles. Only 4 people in the UK from 20 to 29 years old get diagnosed with that per year, that's like 0.0004% chances of getting it. 4 out of about 5 million is like 1 out of 1.2 million chances. The chance of an average person living in the US (as an example) being struck by lightning in a given year is estimated at 1 in 960,000. You have more freaking chances of dying from a lightning than ever getting diagnosed with rare illnesses at such a young age, yet... for some reason, I can't find as many articles that talk about people getting struck by lightning, I wonder why? Well, it is because talking about that isn't as morbid as talking about cancers.

Most of the people who write these health articles are not even MDs anyway.

That's the end of my rant, sorry if it offends anybody (I don't see why it would, though) but I had to say it.

[MyNameIsTerry]

Most of the people who write these health articles are not even MDs anyway.

Good point, androidz. You get this on all sorts of sites, bloggers can be a pain. You would hope someone qualified checks the articles. Really, any good researcher should be able to handle such things but then as you say, their paymasters are not necessarily after the reality.

Some of the mental health dig up some right dodgy gurus and only help them sell their snake oil which is a gripe of mine.