colon polops

[lorraine]

hi

two and half years ago i had a cancerous polop removed from my bowel. i had it removed during a colonoscopy. now whenever i get something wrong with me like the water infection i have just had i am fearful that it is the cancer spread all round by body. I did not have to have further surgery or chemo or radiothearpy as the polops came off clean. I have had another colonoscopy since and everything was normal. I have to have another one in three years time. I am always checking my body for lumps and i am tired of worrying if its going to come back it is wearing me out. As i am writing this i am shaking as it makes me feel so scared.

lorraine

[rckclmbr]

i'm sorry to hear that you're having such a rough time right now, but i want to reassure you in that polyps take years to become cancerous ... and you are having colonoscopies every three years so any polyps that develop will be found and removed long before they turn into cancer.

i promise that if the doctors who removed the polyp thought the cancer could have spread, they would have done more.

everything was normal at your last colonoscopy too which is another reassuring fact.

i know i can't say "don't worry" (because i worry, too, about my own polyp) but i hope you will be able to find some peace in knowing that being screened every three years will allow the doctors to "catch" any polyps that develop before they become a threat to your health.

[lorraine]

hi

thanks for your reply. I had had blood when going to the toliet on and off for about 9 years and was too scared to go to doctor and when i actually did they found the polops if i had gone sooner it probably would not of even been cancerous. so what you have said has reassured me a little more thankyou.

lorraine

[rckclmbr]

yeah, those polyps can hang out in there for quite awhile before becoming cancerous.

still, i know it's scary just knowing you had a cancerous polyp at all. i'm still trying to figure out how to reconcile with that knowledge! mine was precancerous, but i'm relatively young to have had one, so it disturbed me a lot.

as long as we stay vigilant about getting those follow up colonoscopies, i think we should be just fine.

[lorraine]

hi

thankyou so much for your replys they have made me feel a little calmer especially the fact the you have also had a polop too.

I am 43yrs old i thought i was young to have this too.

I think they are quite common. A lady at my friends work had 9 polops and 4 were cancerous the rest were not. At least we only had one!!!!!!

Thanks again

lorraine

[HazG]

I don't want to worry anyone but but i would like to tell you my story.

My mum has just passed away from Bowel cancer caused by cancerous polyps and we were told it had only been growing for two years !! she had an opperation to have the tumor removed as it perforated the bowel before her due surgery date!

We were only told two days before xmas that she had cancer of the bowel and by Jan 31st she had gone,i cannot begin to tell you how this has affected me and i feel very worried that i too may get cancer of the bowel and at the moment i dont think i could go through any tests as its all still very raw as i took mum for all her tests and its still fresh and it would be the same hospital.

My mum was 84 but a very active 84 year old she neer looked her age or acted it such a shock.

[lorraine]

hi

im sorry to hear about your mum. Its such a shock when you lose a parent. I lost my dad 2 yrs ago he had a heart attack.

You do start to feel better as time moves on. Theres not a day goes by that i dont think about my dad it just gets less painful.

Hope you start to feel a bit better soon.


lorraine