Sharing my experience of fearing bowel cancer

I feel I need to share this experience because I found so many others out there with the same fears and it would have helped me to read something like this. I'm 30 and a few months ago I had alarming symptoms, a few times noticed blood when I wiped.. then had blood coated stool during an extreme bout of constipation. Then I started noticing globs of mucus on stool. I ran to my GP when the mucus started. One day I also noticed what looked like black stool. My GP immediately did a referral for a colonoscopy. I followed up on that referral and was told I would get an appointment in 9 months... WTF. Went back to GP who did a referral to a nearby city and it was a six week wait.. much better but in total it was 3 agonizing months of me obsessing over poop, looking for symptoms and scouring the net (bad idea.) When I finally went for my colonoscopy yesterday I was in tears from all the pent up anxiety for that moment. The doctor was so reassuring. I told him everything and he said "you know what,I'm almost certain we're going to find a perfectly healthy bowel today." he even recommended doing it without sedation so I could see it for myself. So I agreed to try and you know what? It wasn't that bad. A little uncomfortable at the bends but manageable. What he saw was exactly what he predicted. Not a single thing.. nothing. Not even a hemmroid.. although they obviously do cause occasional bleeding.

With all that said if you have symptoms regardless of your age absolutely get it checked out. Better safe than sorry. All I'm trying to say is don't assume the worst while you wait.

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