20 years old, worried about bowel cancer.

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Worried and concerned. About three and half years ago I started having strange BMs (constipation, diarrhoea and urgency) I went to the doctor they told me it was down to stress which made sense as this was when I stared having panic attacks and bad anxiety, I also struggle with health anxiety. A year later I started to notice mucus in my stool not a lot and only occasionally, so I went to the doctor and she told me I was because I was constipated and need to drink more. I didn't drink much so this made sense. Since then I have always had really strange bowel, I would have hard peddle like stools but they would come with a lot of urgency (when I needed to go I had to go). Then just before Christmas I started to notice after going to the toilet I was having wipe a lot and some times I would see yellow mucus. About a month ago my bowel changed again and I have been going to the toilet once something twice a day(mix of hard and soft stools), this is very unusual for me as I use to go about three times a week. I have also been experiencing pain left side of my stomach which is tender to touch, occasionally right of my belling button hurts and a tight feeling around my lower stomach before BM. I have noticed red blood on the end of my stool before only a small area was covered, Iv seen this three times in the past four months. I have recently gone to the doctors to tell them what's happening and I had some blood and stool tests done(haven't got the results yet, the tests where for anaemia, b12, Iron, infection and inflammatory. My mum has ulcerative colitis and my cousin has crowns  disease which I know can be genetic however I don't have diarrhoea which is the common symptom, this was the reason for the inflammatory stool test. I think I might be anaemic as I am having a lot of the symptoms, this worries me as I know you can have blood in your stool that isn't visible by eye and I have been having Symptoms of anaemia since Christmas. I am so worried that all this time I thought I was having weird BMs was because of my anxiety when actually it's actually due to bowel cancer and Iv just been ignoring all the signs and blaming my anxiety. 

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  • Posted

    Georgina I can see why you are concerned doctors are too easy to diagnose everything as ibs there are other reasons for those symptoms also some quite serious not saying yours is but I would go back to your gp and tell them about what runs in your family and be diligent about seeing a gi doctor don't let them fob you off because of your age being rare for serious disease my doctors have fobbed me off for a year and I'm afraid I have cancer but not of the colon

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