Worst thing to do when you have cancer fears.

[Mindphaser]

Hi!

I guess i'll win Captain Obvious award with this, but I have to warn some of you : don't read "cancer stories". Especially if youre young and at low risk. Meaning, you'll always find story like "I thought i was young and healthy but..." I've read some of them to check first symptoms and it scared the shit out of me. Of course everything is similar in those stories to my current situation and some grim thoughts are terrorising my mind. I'm obseesed now with bowel cancer, and I just can't get those out of head. Don't make my mistake.

[girlgryphon]

Too late :weep:

[fma11122345]

I'm there with brain cancer -.- I know its not but its just this nagging thought that wont leave.

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[Murdock]

Same with me but with stomach cancer. Stupidly thought it would help like they’d have symptoms I didn’t maybe, but it just made it worse. I’ve just gone through the bowel cancer fear and put myself through the joy of a flexi sigmoidoscopy to find out there was nothing wrong with me; and that was after 6 months of being absolutely convinced. Why don’t I learn.

[raizorpoke]

Hi!

I guess i'll win Captain Obvious award with this, but I have to warn some of you : don't read "cancer stories". Especially if youre young and at low risk. Meaning, you'll always find story like "I thought i was young and healthy but..." I've read some of them to check first symptoms and it scared the shit out of me. Of course everything is similar in those stories to my current situation and some grim thoughts are terrorising my mind. I'm obseesed now with bowel cancer, and I just can't get those out of head. Don't make my mistake.

Yeah, another bad thing is that if these worry you and you then come to no more panic with your concerns there are people that will basically berate you and tell you to "get over it". It isn't easy but from personal experience I would say that aversion to those sites in particular is important. They highlight the rare within the rare. Not healthy.

[Mindphaser]

Stupidly thought it would help like they’d have symptoms I didn’t maybe, but it just made it worse.

It's ALWAYS like that.

I'm so tired of living in fear.

A month ago I've noticed i have bumpy purple node on my back. I convinced my GF to take a photo of it (shes really concerned about HA, she said if it will not get better I'll have to go back on meds) and was analysing it for hours, next day i went to dermatologist. Good thing (or bad thing in our case) about living in this stupid country is that can get to any specialist with relatively small price really fast, you just go on znanylekarz.pl type specialist and city and there you go, doctors, opinons, prices and schedule, like catalogue. You almost always will find someone with good opinions with available date like for tomorrow or today. Price for meeting is usually like 40$. So after finding this stupid node i went the next day to derm, she was really nice and checked me with dermatoscope and said it benign for 99%, BUUUUTT there was another mole she noticed which looked "more interesting" but she said I "have to keep an eye on it". And she said if that hemangioma will be still growing it would be okay to cut it out. My thought were like "oookaay, keep an on what? like observing when melanoma is growing and spreading through my body?". I went home and started my retarded research on the net. Sooo i found one story on one polish cancer forum where one lady was misdiagnosed with something like i had on my back and she died like year after. I went to my home city and paid one surgeon about 300$ to have both "moles" excised. He said i did the good thing because the real mole looked suspicious. A week waiting for biopsy, i thought my life was ending. Both benign, of f**king course. I was happy for a week then my anus started to hurt... Here came bowel cancer obsession, and here i live in this constant fear.

[Caseyg89]

Same with me but with stomach cancer. Stupidly thought it would help like they’d have symptoms I didn’t maybe, but it just made it worse. I’ve just gone through the bowel cancer fear and put myself through the joy of a flexi sigmoidoscopy to find out there was nothing wrong with me; and that was after 6 months of being absolutely convinced. Why don’t I learn.

I'm also terrified about stomach cancer even after two endoscopes, an MRI and a double contrast barium test and the online stories are the worst!!! Do you not find you go on there hoping to read how different and extreme the symptoms are and they never are and then you panic? Or I'll read a story that sounds just like mine and freak out. I'm obsessed with every sensation in my stomach.

[Murdock]

Do you not find you go on there hoping to read how different and extreme the symptoms are and they never are and then you panic? Or I'll read a story that sounds just like mine and freak out. I'm obsessed with every sensation in my stomach.

Exactly that. I go on and I’ll hope none of their symptoms will start like mine and then I read something like how it just started as heartburn or indigestion and then I freak out. I’ve had an gastroscopy but that was 10 years ago. My doc says if I still have symptoms in a month she’ll send me for another. I think she just wants to reassure me but I’ve convinced myself now that if in a month it’s not gone then that means my GP thinks I have cancer too. Obviously thoughts like that fuel my anxiety and my symptoms then don’t go away. It’s a vicious circle

[bubx]

I once watched youtube videos of people discussing their diagnosis and symptoms of cancer. Bad bad idea :doh:

[Mindprison]

Agree with this. It's a bit ridiculous how often these stories seem to pop up and it's always the same culprits. Gossip rag newspapers putting the fear of god into people just because this special case somehow ended up being cancer.

What a lot of people with anxiety (myself inculded) forget is that cancer under a certain age (unless it's something like testicular which can happen at a young age but has a cure rate of 99%) is exceedingly rare and more often than not has a family history of the disease below 50.

What annoys me is how it somehow paints doctors/surgeons/health professionals as idiots. "My doctor misdiagnosed this and now i'm going to die" is a popular headline for these cases. That then fuels this fear that our doctors are incapable of looking after us and the self diagnosis starts and then before you know it you can't accept the truth that there's nothing wrong with you.

It'll never happen but to be honest these kinds of things should just be banned in tabloids, it fuels too much fear in people for the sake of selling their garbage newspaper.

[Mindphaser]

I totally agree Mindprison. Last time I've almost recovered from the fear of bowel cancer and then i found some piece of shit spam on my Facebook wall, something like "She miscarried child but the truth was even worse", like a stupid fool I clicked on this clickbait and found out that she in fact had BOWEL CANCER. Docs said her symptoms were due the miscarraige but in fact she has bowel cancer. It's too late for any therapy, she has few months to live. For *uck sake, all fears came back as well as symptoms.