Hello everyone. I’m 23 (from the UK & I’m black) and I’ve been having worrying symptoms now for about a month or two.
Don’t have a family history of any type of cancer. Both of my parents are elderly with no health complications. My grandad had colitis quite badly!
It all started with abdominal pain which lasted about three days and then disappeared and never came back. I didn’t think much of it at the time. A few days later, I came across an article about a girl not much older than me being misdiagnosed with IBS for over a year when she actually had bowel cancer - I started to see blood and mucus in my poo and started to get constipated! How f**king weird is that! I had never been constipated or seen blood in my poo before prior to reading that article! I went to my GP and discussed my problems and he said it’s NOT bowel cancer (how would she know?)
She did a blood test and everything came back fine. No anemia, iron levels were fine, no inflammation of the blood, my liver and kidney function was fine. I had a blood test the previous month and my hemoglobin was higher in the previous test which scares me as that must mean I’m losing blood somewhere and my platelets slightly increased but my CRP had gone down to 2. My white blood cells are quite low too. I also did a FOB test which showed no signs of hidden blood in my stool sample. I’m very gassy all the time. I get so bloated after eating and I don’t know why as I have never had this problem before. I do have an underactive thyroid which isn’t being treated but that doesn’t explain the blood loss? Everywhere just aches! I’m just amazed how fast these symptoms have come along after reading the article! My stools are sometimes pencil thin but sometimes normal with no blood or mucus. My stool floats pretty much all the time and I can always see undigested food in it. The once - I only pooped mucus (there was no blood in that though). I actually have also put on weight, don’t have appetite loss and I don’t have a distended abdomen. I have a constant urge to wee, I always empty my bladder but I am peeing a lot more urine at one go than I used to. I wonder how my bladder can hold so much liquid even though I don’t think I’m drinking that much water I’m thinking, the tumour must be pressing on my bladder!! I try to convince myself of statistics which show a 2 in 100,000 chance of me getting it in my age group but it’s hard believe when you’re displaying classic signs.
My GP doesn’t seem to be bothered by this?! Surely this is a reason for a colonoscopy. I’m going to demand a colonoscopy even though I’m really scared what I think is going to be the outcome I’m just amazed at how fast my symptoms have spread. I have always looked at my poo after using the toilet and I have never noticed blood. I just find it all so odd. I’m so scared I’ll walk up from the colonoscopy and they’ll say we found a tumour and it’ll be stage 4 and game over. Oh God. I don’t understand how this can be happening to me when I come from such a huge family and no one else has cancer I am crying most days thinking about it. I’m scared chemo won’t work and they’ll say palliative care only. I have looked at crohn’s disease and my blood work seems to match that except you normally get diarrhea - not constipation. I just want someone to hold my hand and tell me whatever the outcome is - it’ll be ok I’m sorry that I’ve posted this. Some of you are going through a tough battle and I wish you all the luck in the world. You must get so tired of hearing about people like me moan about their symptoms. I am so scared. I just wrote this because it’s currently stressed out and can’t sleep. I can’t believe I’m worrying about cancer at 23. WHY ME!