Hey, there! My name is Dommy and I am 31 years old! Reading posts on this site has provided a lot of comfort for me in the past so I finally took the plunge to join in! (Albeit not for the most comfortable or settling of reasons :I)
CW: mentions of poo, blood, etc..
Basically, a week ago, I started to get a pretty strange change in my bowel habits. I could still go but it felt as if I was having incomplete movements. Naturally, being a panicker, I completely shut down. I more or less stopped eating, stopped using my ecig (thus depriving myself of the stimulation of nicotine!), and stopped drinking coffee (caffeine).
After this point, it still felt like an incomplete movement but the stool that was coming out became increasingly.. amorphous I guess is the best word. It lost all shape until it became diarrhea. This was something probably helped along by the soluble fibre supplement prescribed for my by the nurse I saw.
Two days after seeing the nurse (yesterday, in fact), I spoke to my GP. He's somebody familiar with my borderline-hysteria and I do feel as if that clouded his judgment of my symptoms. He reminded me about times in the past when I've worried about health problems but, indulging me, he did perform a rectal exam and a feel about my tummy - both of which came up showing nothing.
So! Yesterday I was a little bit if not fully relieved. Managed to eat more than I had done in a week. But I awoke to find that, while my stool was no longer exactly diarrhea, it still felt obstructed somehow. Incomplete. I've not shown any blood recently but, of course, after doing lots and lots and lots and lots of fevered Googling, I've learned just how long term bowel cancer is and how early the signs show up. And my mind is cast back to a year or so ago when I found blood (bright red, almost pinkish blood) after wiping. I'm not totally concerned by that because I also remember having to buy piles cream around about that time as well but it is something that adds to my worry. As does the fact that I have definitely been more sleepy than usual over the past couple of years (although again, I recognise that could be caused by innumerable factors).
I must admit that today I am in a bit of a mess. I feel as if my symptoms aren't being taken seriously at all and I'm feeling as if I'm going to need to poop or puke blood and insist on going to the ER before I get within sniffing distance of a scan of any kind. I know how important catching bowel cancer early is but I just don't feel as if I'm being given a chance to catch it early, with screening only afforded to older folks unless the circumstances are extremely dire. Even if my bowel problem is in fact innocuous, getting that treated seems like an insurmountable effort.
For context, the day before this started, I did eat a whollllle load of quorn. Is it possible that that has caused some sort of blockage? Or is it piles simply making me -feel- like I need to poop more than I do? So many possibilities, with answers just so hard to find.
For EXTRA context, my mother actually died a few months ago (not from bowel cancer) and maybe that could have stressed out my guts somehow? I've repressed my response to her death quite stubbornly and it could have manifested in these toilet problems, I dunno.
Anyway! Thank you for reading if you got this far! I'm going to try really, really hard to stop overthinking things, hard though we all know that is.
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