Panicking about colon cancer at 21!!!
Hi everyone!
I am new to this forum, but I was scrolling through a lot of the posts, and y'all are so reassuring and kind, so I figured I would post because I have been so worried to the point where I'm practically bed-ridden from fear about colon cancer. I am a 21 year old female, and about 1.5 months ago, I had a random bout of diarrhea that lasted about 1.5 weeks. My stool was really loose, but I was only going about 1-2 times per day. I got tested for coronavirus and it came back negative, and the stool eventually got a better but I was starting to go about 1 to sometimes 3 times a day, and my stools were still a bit loose but not watery and kind of small and thin but I never saw any blood. I also had a lot of gas and intermittent stabbing pain in my rectum. Throughout this time, I was panicking about colon cancer already, so I booked an appointment with a GI doc which I had last week. Between me making the appointment and last week, my stools had gotten a lot better (weren't thin and I was going less) but I went to the appointment just for peace of mind.
So, I get to the appointment, and she tells me that she's pretty sure it's IBS but that she wants to rule out everything else, so I got a blood test to check my thyroid levels, C reactive protein (for Crohn's I think), and Celiac's disease. I also got a FIT test for occult blood and a stool test for pathogens. Basically, everything came back negative except for my stool test. On the day of my test, I maybe saw a streak of blood, but it wasn't obvious, and I didn't have blood on my toilet paper this entire time. My GI contacted me today, and I have to do a colonoscopy next week.
Anyways, I would just really appreciate some reassurance and your thoughts in general. I have pretty severe health anxiety as is, and this has sent it sky rocketing. I'm going to be a senior in college, and I am supposed to fly back to school in a few weeks, and I can't help but catastrophize and plan future cancer treatments that are going to prevent me from going back. I'm so, so scared, and I've just been a wreck. I know I just have to wait, but I can't help thinking it's the worst case scenario. Please help :(
Re: Panicking about colon cancer at 21!!!
I'm sure you're going to be just fine. There are so many other reasons for blood in your stool, cancer is the least likely. You are also young, so you have that on your side. The amount of times I had blood when I was younger, and I never even got it checked, and here I am, 20 years later.. Let us know how you get on, but try and breathe easy, cancer is the least likely out of all possible things x
Re: Panicking about colon cancer at 21!!!
Thank you so much for your response. That makes me feel a lot better.
I'm just worried because my GI doctor messaged me and was like "80% of people with colon cancer will have a positive result" which obviously freaked me out haha.
Do you think it's worrying that the blood wasn't really visible? I've read too many posts about hemorrhoids and that people seem to get really obvious bleeding, which I don't have?
Re: Panicking about colon cancer at 21!!!
Quote:
Originally Posted by
worriedsick123
Thank you so much for your response. That makes me feel a lot better.
I'm just worried because my GI doctor messaged me and was like "80% of people with colon cancer will have a positive result" which obviously freaked me out haha.
Do you think it's worrying that the blood wasn't really visible? I've read too many posts about hemorrhoids and that people seem to get really obvious bleeding, which I don't have?
Okay so 80% of people that have colon cancer have a positive, that doesn’t mean 80% of the people that have a positive result have cancer though. Just that those that do also had positive tests, colon cancer is still not that common.
There are so many other reasons for blood that are so more likely. Haemorrhoids don’t always bleed or bleed obviously, I’ve not had much from mine at all, if anything visible at all.
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