# IBS? Or something worse?



## zennyboy10 (Jun 7, 2014)

Hi guys, I'll start off by saying I'm 18, overweight, suffer from anxiety and asthma.

About 2 and a half months a go, I suffered from a bout of food poisoning, I think it came from some chicken or possible a kebab I ate on the day. Anyway, for the next 1 and a half weeks I suffered from diarrhea ( normally 2-3 times a day, normally first thing in the morning) stomach pain/ cramps and the occasional rectal pain (well it was a weird sort of stabbing pain, mainly when I was lying down). After this food poisoning, I recovered and went back to having normal bowel movements and solid stools. Now, about a month ago, I started having stomach pains, cramps and I have diarrhea again. With the diarrhea, I normally need it shortly after I wake up, I get a pain in my stomach notifying me that I need to relieve my bowels, and of course with it being diarrhea it's loose stools. But another thing I have noticed is that both my ribs have started hurting, it's hard to describe it but it's not a nice feeling. Also, the left rib hurts to touch, near the bottom of the rib, it feels like I have bruised it or something as when I press down it hurts, and a bit further I also have some pain, also hurts to touch it there. I noticed that when I do empty my bowels, the pain does slightly ease up but then returns later and also when I eat (I do eat quite a lot in a day, mainly fast food and fried foods and sweet stuff etc) the pain comes back a bit as my stomach is full. As far as I am aware, there's no blood in my stools, it's just normally quite runny, loose and brown and I haven't suffered from any weight loss as of yet. I am genuinely really worried because I always have the feeling that I may have bowel cancer, and because I suffer from anxiety, the pain gets ever more worse when I start thinking about it and worry. I haven't had the chance to see the doctors yet but I am definitely going to make an appointment soon. What do you think I could possibly have? Thanks people.


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## somerhalder (Feb 21, 2014)

I'm really sorry you're going through this. While I can't help diagnose your problem, I can definitely understand where you're coming from with the anxiety and cancer worries so please know you're not alone through this! My doctor will palm all of my symptoms off to health anxiety or IBS. Hopefully you make a doctors appointment soon and find out what's going on! If you need someone to talk to about your anxiety then feel free to rant to me.


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## Kathleen M. (Nov 16, 1999)

Unless you are elderly the chances of bowel cancer are very very slim.

IBS is very common in young adults and adults and always causes pain/discomfort of some kind.

Bowel cancer is very rare in anyone other than the elderly (unless you are from a family with a polyp disease and they would already have you on a regular monitoring routine by the time you are an adult) and generally does not cause a lot of pain for most of the disease. We think of cancer as extremely painful because it is that way right at the end when the tumors are all over the place and pushing on things that can feel pain. Tumors usualy don't have any nerves so can't report pain to your brain directly. That is why we often hear about people who had no idea they had cancer until something really unusual happenes to let us know it is there. Which doesn't help with the anxiety much as the cancer tends to stay hidden.


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