Tmi, I know, but I've been having a heck of a time the last few days. I noticed that my stool isn't exactly round like you'd expect.
The last 2 bowel movements I've had both seemed abnormal to me.
The first one was fairly normal, except it was more oval than round. I used some play-doh to model some examples.
You'd expect normal stool to look round, like a sausage. Like this:
https://i.imgur.com/aCRSk7V.jpg
But mine, looks more squashed. Like this:
https://i.imgur.com/wl3AMxx.jpg Now that I'm looking at the picture, I think mine was even flatter than this.
The second bm (today) was pretty soft and even flatter! It looked like it even had defined edges on it, almost like a rectangle. This is terrifying me.
Of course when you Google flat stool, the first thing that comes up is colon cancer, so now I'm freaking out. I don't want to keep running back to my doctor for every little thing, so I'm trying to calm myself down, but it's hard because I can't even think what else would cause this! Apparently it at one point was a "red flag" indicator for colon cancer, but I've read that maybe it isn't anymore?
The one thing I'm using to calm myself down right now, is that both were fairly soft. I'm guessing that if they did pass by a blockage, they were so soft that my anal exit (sphincter?) would just reform them when they were coming out anyways, right? Maybe my "exit" isn't round? Lol.
I'm just hoping someone else can say they have similar stools.
I'm sorry for the graphic detail.