Postby Lee » Wed Aug 09, 2017 1:47 pm
Hi and welcome,
First take a deep breath. Your symptoms could be caused by many different things, cancer is just one possibility. I don't think you have cancer either. BUTT by the shear fact you have/had blood in your stool, yes you should have a colonoscopy. A colonoscopy will give you a true diagnoses of what is going on, anything else is just a speculation. You need to see a GI doc for the colonoscopy
If I am reading your post correctly, you have been referred for a colonoscopy, that is good.
For what it's worth, I had no symptoms other than bleeding hemorrhoids. Every test that should have been a warning for cancer came back normal. My doctor figured my hemorrhoids were my excuse for getting my baseline colonoscopy early in life. I felt perfectly fine when I was diagnosed.
Many years prior, my mother ended up in the ER with rectal bleeding and stomach pain. ER doc was thinking colon cancer. They did a scope, no cancer, not even one polyp, just a bad case of diverticulosis.
So try not to worry, butt get that scope and come back and let us know.
Lee
rectal cancer - April 2004
46 yrs old at diagnoses
stage III C - 6/13 lymph positive
radiation - 6 weeks
surgery - August 2004/hernia repair 2014
permanent colostomy
chemo - FOLFOX
NED - 16 years and counting!