Hi people, 38m from Queensland Australia.
It is 3 days until my colonoscopy and endoscopy. 3 days until my whole life flashes in front of me. I can do nothing but think about this. Such a horrible feeling.
Is it a health anxiety I'm dealing with here? I'll let the specialist decide on Thursday if it's not but I would love some advice.
This is how I got here. ( Kinda long but I need to do this, bear with me )

In Early January I was diagnosed with skin cancer on the back of my hand. Now this little dry patch of skin had been there for a few years. One doctor even telling me that it was just a dry patch of skin. but in October last year this little patch changed colour slightly. I didn't do anything about it until after my honeymoon. SO when I got back I googled skin cancer on the Friday evening and found out what kinda skin cancer it could be. Now this cancer although mostly harmless had like a 3% chance of spreading if left for a long period of time. A few years is a long time in my books so I started stressing out big time. Crying in my wifes arms convinced that it had spread to lymph nodes or some place else and I was going to die a slow and horrible death.
So I went to an after hours surgery on the Sunday to get some clarification.( Not my usual Dr, I was panicking and I wanted to know NOW! ) The Dr took one look at it and said " Yep, could be cancer, better have it cut out" So I got nothing out of that. Actually it left me in a more panicked state.

The following day I went to my doctor who did a biopsy ( finally some action ) and said it would be 2 days before the results came in. And guess what? it was exactly what I thought it was, but he stated that it had not spread anywhere and I should get it cut out by a specialist due to the the placement of it on my hand and have it done within 2 months.

Why 2 months. Did I believe it hadn't spread. NOPE!!! It didn't matter what the doctor or biopsy said, I could still see it. And while I could still see, it had a chance of spreading, if it hadn't already. Then I started to convince myself that the biopsy could rupture it, or something of the like, and it would start spreading from now. I made an appointment with the specialist for 6 weeks later. 6 weeks of spreading time. I went back to my Dr 3 times in that 6 week period. Once for getting my biopsy stitches out and the others trying to get some reassurance. He kept saying he's pretty certain that from the biopsy it hadn't spread. But he never looked me in the eye and told me I had nothing to worry about. Where there is doubt there is chance it had spread.

I finally got to the specialist ( skin cancer removal and cosmetic surgeon ) to get it cut out. I was so nervous. Waited for about 45 min to go in only to be told this is the intial consultation only. Now I have another 3 weeks to wait. 3 more weeks of stressing about all of this.
I finally had it cut out, and yes you guessed it, it had not spread.

By this time though I had started to develop stomach problems, feeling sore under my arms where I knew lymph glands were and gassy feelings in my stomach. I had also lost about 3 kgs. ( I'm only 160 cm or 5'2" and was only 62 kg's when all this started. But after a few weeks these seemed to dissapear.

About a month after surgery, mid April,4 of us went camping on Moreton Is. A beautiful place for those that know it. We were having a great weeknd until Sunday morning when my long term heamorroid problem showed it's ugly face. I started to worry. You see, while I had been researching my other symptoms on the internet when I had them, armed me with all this knowledge. I knew that anal bleeding was attributed to stomach cancer. I started to stress straight away. My upper and lower stomach went into overdrive a cpl of hours later and I had 3-4 successive bowel movements.
All with blood. Not really diarrhea and I had no vomiting either. We initially thought it was a virus from the tap water you werent to drink. Bu we did wash down the plates with it without soap and used them again. Disgusting I know. The following day I went to the doctor who said it was a virus and come back in a week if I still had the symptoms of a over active stomach and fatigue. Which i did. He gave this high dose antibiotic which fixed me up for a few days then I went back to the same gassy feelings in my stomach.

I was getting worried. REALLY worried. I had basically stopped socialising with friends, wasnt going out to much. Except to work. I had lost another 3kg's, now down to 57- 58 kg's and a lot of people were telling me i looked sick, washed out, skinny. Weight loss was another symptom of cancer. As well as my lack of appetite through all of this. Another cancer sign. 2 weeks after my camping trip I was a crying mess convinced I had either stomach cancer or pancreatic cancer.

I was spending so much time researching everything about symptoms. So I finally contacted my work place counciller ( free service ) to talk ti him about it as I was starting to believe it could be anxiety related.
Apparently high anxiety can have huge effects on your digestive system. So after 2 sessions with him I was starting to feel better about it all when I had slight stomach gurgling one day at work and it set my anxiety/panic off again.

I went back to the doctor again who didn't know what was wrong by now so he referred me to a G I specialist for a endoscopy. I had a week to wait for the procedure and it was one of the most nervous weeks of my life.
What was he going to find.?????

I went to the phyciatrist in this week who said I was doing the right thing as I needed to know what was wrong so that I could address my anxiety issues.

He found mild gastritis. Told me to go back and see my DR, which I did, and I was prescribed losec, from the PPI drug family. Disaster averted. This time !

4 weeks later the symptoms were still there. The doctor said he expected the syptoms to clear after 6- 8 weeks of losec and the symptoms were consistant with gastritis. Another 2 weeks went by and still no real improvement. By this stage I was also starting to get stomach tension or bloating. Not sure which one as It really isn't visible type bloating. Oh and constipation. If 2-3 days of no bowel movemnts is classified as constipation. He said give it another month. I went back again in another 2 weeks with the invisible bloating etc and was told that it is a common side effect of the medication ( but i knew that through more google research ) and to go of the meds and see how you feel in a few weeks.

By this time I had been checking all my bowel movemnts for weeks, weighing myself between 2 - 5 times a day, feeling my stomach for lumps, lying in quiet places to see how much I can hear my stomach, listenig to my wifes stomach at night seeing if I can hear similar sounds to mine as well. Basically cut out drinking alcohol, no caffiene or fast food and waiting for any new symptom to appear to confirm that I now have some kind of serious condition. Most liely bowel/colon cancer.

So 3 weeks ago and 2 weeks after going off the meds I had a lump cut out of my back that the doctor assured me was a non-cancerous cyst. I still havent seen about the results of the tests on the cyst but he said he would ring me if there was anything wrong. He didn't ring. I'm thinking he hasn't even looked at the results. So it could still be bad news. I told him I was feeling a bit better since going off the meds but i still had slight feelings of gas and bloating. He said that there was no need to go to a specialist again. But I insisted I wanted to go.

I went to the specialist last Wednesday and he basically said that from what I am describing there is a infantly small chance that it's something serious but he wants the colonoscopy done to make sure and the 2 nd endoscopy done to check for ceoliac disease.
But he gave me an example of a younger girl who he thought had nothing and turned out o be cancer so he will always check to rule out the more serious things. Well I immediatley thought, if it can happen to her, it can happen to me. Hence my state of panic leading up to this Thursday.

So thats my story so far, long I kow but I had to put it down somewhere.
I would love to chat about this with someone online sometime. Get some frustrations out and ask questions. I feel sorry for my wife, we only got married last November and it's been a year from hell for me/us so far.

Thanks for your comments / replies in advance.

Dooges