# My story....24 yr old hypochondriac afraid of colon cancer...please read



## adam4little (Feb 10, 2011)

I realize that posting on here is probably a big no no and I should turn around and just walk out the internet door haha. The thing is, I have driven my girlfriend, my mother, my brother, my friends, hell, even my cats all mad because I can't stop asking my hypochondriacal questions. I laugh, but I trully am going crazy and I dont know what anyone here will really be able to tell me anyways.The symptoms of colon cancer are vague..am I right? Ok so I was a vegeatarian for 2 years and I went to this Christmas party a couple of months ago and I got really drunk and stupid and went to town on this plate of ham. Needless to say I started experiencing bowel troubles after-constipation mainly.Ive also been a 'shy pooper' -so bad that I have always made my family go to town so I could use the bathroom (ridiculous I know) So around this time I started a new job and the bathroom at my new job sucks and is very public so I pretty much only had a two hour window to use the bathroom in the mornings (after my gf left for work) Because of the poop pressure I started drinking coffee heavily to help get this stuff out because I was obsessed with having an empty bowel before going to work. Anyways, I eventually got somewhat regular and life was good. A week ago I developed nausea. The nausea has been mild, worse when moving from a sitting to standing position and vice versa. It's been bad enough that I keep complaining about it-but Ive still been hungry and everything. Anyways couple of days ago I lost my appetite. I mean, dont get my wrong, alot of it is due to the fact that I feel more nauseaus when I eat but also a part of it is due to really high levels of anxiety. I took some pepto (two nights ago) ate anyways and freaked out the next day when I had black stool. I checked online and black stool means colon cancer. So that was in my head, I rush to the walk in clinic-they tell me pepto can also cause black stool-but now the colon cancer idea is there and like any anxious person knows it won't leave. So at the doctor's I am experiencing all the symptoms -choking, fatigue etc. He does an X Ray and finds I have a large amount of feces backed up in my colon. He prescribes miralax and gives me the name of a GI if it doesnt clear up. He says this MIGHT explain the occassional pencil stools, the nausea, gas, bloating, etc. When I asked him about colon cancer he said he wouldnt jump the gun but he also wouldnt discount it...seems like a reasonable man.I pooped this morning and it was black again. I am hungry but I feel like I cant eat. I am very anxious about all of this. I dont want to have to have a colonoscopy because it sounds so painful. Will someone give me some comforting words? ThanksOh btw-24 yr old No family history of cancer if that helps Also very loud stomach noises-gurgling bubblingAnd....this morning I had a BM dark brown squiggly thin poops (after my first dark brown BM this morning which was pretty normal escept for the dark color-I also had pepto bismol night before last first time in a long time)BTW you guys ever try the colon blood test things you can get at wal mart? They work? Thanks-Adam


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## Kathleen M. (Nov 16, 1999)

(DO NOT PANIC OVER WHAT I AM ABOUT TO SAY!)







Black AND tarry is usually gastritis or an ulcer (both way more likely in a younger person) but stool can be dark just from taking awhile to go through the GI track (it starts yellow or green, fairly light in color, and gets darker as the bacteria in the colon--normal bacteria--work on the colors your bile adds to the stool and it becomes darker and darker brown).Black/dark stools can also be from iron supplement, pepto-bismol, charcoal, or some foods with iron in them. It isn't always blood and nothing else, and like I said black AND tarry is usually an upper GI bleed, not colon cancer.Pepto bismol can turn your tongue and your stool black, it is almost always listed side effect on the bottle.Colon cancer bleeding usually is "occult" anyway (why they have the blood testing strips or do a test in the doctor's office) as it is a tiny amount, not usually enough to be seen easily.Colon cancer at 24 is close to impossible (extremely rare, like you might get written up in a medical journal because they almost never see it kind of rare and/or they'll put you on one of those rare disease medical shows that scare people because they aren't clear that the thin happens to one person in all the world in a generation). Even in families with a polyp disease you tend to see the cancers in their 30s rather than teens and 20's and that would be 1/2 your family gets colon cancer before 45-50, not no history of colon cancer.It really is a disease of the elderly, it forms in the polyps, the polyps take years to form, and then they take years to become a cancer.While "thin poop" is commonly listed as a symptom of cancer, even in textbooks, and it seems logical, a person recently did a paper on where that came from, what data was used. Most people, even doctors have heard it repeated often enough they assume there is good data to support that idea. There isn't any. It seemed logical to some doctor back in the mid 1800's and he wrote about it without data. All the data indicates stool width has to do with stool consistency, not having a tumor in just the right spot. Even if it is possible for an obstruction to do that to all stool types (so you may still need only the right stool consistency to be squished into the right shape, and the colon by itself seems totally capable of squishing it without anything else going on and some consistencies never do form a thick stool) it would be a consistent thing, not a once in awhile thing.


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## adam4little (Feb 10, 2011)

Wow...That makes so much sense. Thank you







. So, what should my next step be? He gave me the miralax, Ive been taking it for a day flushing out my system. He says if I dont get better within a week to make an appointment with a GI. I feel better today.I have an appetite again (for certain foods anyways) and my nausea has decreased. I think alot of that had/has to do with anxiety. If you were me, what would be your next step?


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## adam4little (Feb 10, 2011)

Also, any tips on exercising? I have been doing this intense workout program with my girlfriend (p90x) and find it hard to workout when I feel under the weather...very acid refluxy....any pointers? Thank you


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## raym0nd (Nov 28, 2010)

adam4little said:


> Also, any tips on exercising? I have been doing this intense workout program with my girlfriend (p90x) and find it hard to workout when I feel under the weather...very acid refluxy....any pointers? Thank you


I am not a doc/scientist, but will share my observation with you : in the suffering phase of my ibs-c,i saw that some exercising can be bad (confirmed by one of my docs):If your digestion is slow and food remains longer than needed in your stomach, AVOID doing exercises that put too much pressure on the stomach(i guess that *some* forms of yoga and pranayam also come in the banned list if that is the case). I said to myself, lets not be a hypochondriac (i was not, in retrospect) and go to the gym and do "light exercises". I always went to gym after a gap of 4-5 hours after my "light meal" for 1 month. Just pulled weights on machines that put pressure on the tummy. *Never* exerted my self. Guess what, sleep became VERY poor (except one day when i slept with light and a little sound !)and hunger reduced, acidity increased. So, i told my doc about the experience and she said that i should avoid putting pressure on the tummy. I guess the reason was that food was staying longer-than-normal in my tummy. Also, i ate mostly small amount of carbs(rice) after my exercise. Never over-ate those.I read that barium meal tests (i went thru one) are used to find out how long food stays in the tummy - There is another test (dont remember the name) where a dye added to some food is used instead. It seems that, they are unreliable because sometimes meals pass quickly(you must have noticed those unusual days). So just your bad luck if your tummy "decides" to behave well on the day of such a test.To be on the safer side, try going for REGULAR walks with speed and distance as per your capacity. Slowly, increase the speed and distance after a month/week. hope that helps.


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## Kathleen M. (Nov 16, 1999)

If relieving the constipation seems to help with the symptoms then than may be the direction to go. If looking at your diet to see what fiber/water combination keeps things moving isn't helping enough it may be worth going to the GI for a check and probably move onto osmotics (like miralax) on a regular basis to help keep the stool wet enough to move.It also may be worth getting the acid reflux looked at by the GI doc anyway as that may need treatment.http://www.healthcentral.com/acid-reflux/c/39/43070/reflux-exercise has a few tips that may be useful on exercising with reflux.


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## everythingishorrible (Jan 26, 2011)

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