23, really worried about pancreatic cancer

[Mostu]

I'm a 23 year old male, diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder and hypochondria.

My pancreatic cancer worry started about half a year ago - in August 2018 I had a week long nausea, which wasn't related to food/sickness. It went away as suddenly as it came, however I, being the health anxious person I am, wanted to know the reason for it, so I went to my GP who ordered my an Ultrasound. Pancreas was seen clearly on it, and the scan was clear. That gave me some relief, but then the nausea happened two more times, once in October for two days and once on Christmas. Went to a gastroenterelogist and he told me that it's probably Gerd and that if it happens one more time, he'll refer me for a EGD.

January was uneventful and I felt pretty good. However at the beginning of February, I caught some kind of virus - over a course of a few hours I was having a fever, chills, vomiting and back pain. Of course I attributed the back pain to pancreatic cancer. All the symptoms of the infection went away after a good night of sleep, however the back pains persisted for almost whole February, they were located under my shoulderblades and switching sides, once to the left, once to the right and so on. Then they disappeared.

Two days ago, after a birthday party where I drank quite a lot alcohol, I woke up and about 15 minutes later I had this severe epigastric pain, which I never experienced in my life before. It hurt really much and persisted for about 15-20 minutes and then went away. From what I've read, biliary colic has similar symptoms, but I didn't have gallstones on the ultrasound in August.

So since two days ago, I'm a walking stressed mess. I have visited my GP today and she reassured me that I would be losing weight(I actually gained 7kg since December), I'm too young and so on. However, I've read many stories about young patients or patients with intermittent symptoms like me and I'm really anxious. She couldn't refer me for a CT either. Tomorrow I'm going for a blood test, including amylase. She also prescribed me PPI's.

So a quick recap here:
-intermittent nausea since August 2018
-had blood work and ultrasound somewhere in September, all clean
-had a stomach pain after a party two days ago, it was a really strong pain lasting 15-20 minutes, epigastric and I never experienced such a pain before
-had back pain for 3 weeks after a virus
-no family history, not losing weight, no jaundice

What do you guys think?

[nomorepanic]

I don't think it is cancer at all to be honest.

[RadioGaGa]

Pancreatic cancer in the 20s is practically unheard of, irrespective of risk factors/family history etc. So your age alone puts you at a great advantage.
I just checked the statistics for the part of the UK that I'm from. It's run by the "leading" university in this area. The catchment area is a population of around 2million.
The "incidence rate" per 100,000 males aged 20 to 24 was 0! There were no cases in this age group

Pancreatic cancer is notoriously silent, but when it starts making symptoms progression is usually very quick and obvious. You'd be in a dreadful state now if this realyl was pancan

IMHO, all your symptoms are attributable to anxiety. The epigastric region, as I'm sure your Googling told you, is also the area where pain from the stomach can be felt. This, in turn, is probably a case of IBS (or maybe an ulcer at worst).

But you can really move on from this now, but consider omeprazole if your stomach issues persist

good luck

[Mostu]

Thank you for the replies.

RadioGaGa, if you're referring to this chart 4695 then there actually were 2 cases, but the numbers are so dismal that statistically it gives a rate of 0 per 100000. However, there are two poor souls who actually get diagnosed in my age group every year.

I'm trying to deal with my anxiety, however I had my bloods taken today and I'm going to talk about my results with my GP tomorrow. Hopefully my amylase will turn out to be normal, because if it's elevated I'll go crazy.

[RadioGaGa]

Happened again - tried to edit my post on my mobile phone, but it deleted it?

No you have produced the Cancer Research statistics, which is UK wide. I use the Northern Ireland Cancer Registry which is run by Queens University Belfast

The statistics I referred to are for Northern Ireland only. There were 0 cases here. The 2 cases you refer to must have occurred in the mainland, hence why they haven't been included in the NICAN statistics as it is Northern Ireland only

Either way, this is an extremely rare scenario - you do not have pancreatic cancer