Hi

i just read your post and I think you have severe health anxiety.  This is your illness and I believe it needs treating with medication and therapy.  I really feel for you because anxiety can create all the symptoms you talk about.  Diarrhea, stomach cramps, racing pulse, feeling like you're going to die sound like anxiety which is out of control.

Health anxiety is no joke and you need to take it seriously.  You've had a clear colonoscopy and your chances of getting any kind of cancer are very low.  You need to stop having tests and googling.  Please get yourself some help for the terrible anxiety- I promise you that from what you've written this is what you have - health anxiety.

sending you love and hope.

Thank-you so much for taking the time to reply, myself and my doctors are aware I do have extreme health anxiety which I've self referred myself for therapy for. The propranolol was also helping for the 3 weeks that I was feeling well again after my last episode of diarrhea. But now all of a sudden its all back again. Just baffling really as I know anxiety can cause these symptoms, but I was doing better than I've done in years and wasn't feeling stressed really at all so for it to suddenly flare up again is really strange. I was fine, then whilst doing the washing up Thursday morning the room started spinning and I had an upset tummy again, then all my other symptoms came back and I'm still like it today. Being woken up through the night with diarrhea and cramps and nausea, my propranolol don't seem to be working anymore either. Just don't know how to cope anymore whilst I wait for professionals to help with counselling. Think it doesn't help that all you seem to hear lately is terrible illnesses being missed after people have undergone the same testing as me and then it becomes too late. Its so easy to slip into thinking the same has happened to me. I just want to live a normal life, I'm stuck at home 24/7 because I can't be away from the bathroom and I feel too weak and sick to leave the house. I lost my uni degree, my career plans, everything. It really needs more awareness and help xx

Hello,

           reading your post it would seem that you could be your own worst enemy by increasing your stress levels to the point where you could be actually triggering some of the symptoms you describe, but almost certainly making them a whole lot worse by self creating a cumalative situation.People severely underestimate the debilitating effects stress can have upon the bowel and its functions.

The overwhelming majority  of bowel cancers are picked up when the signs become obvious and a diagnosis is hard to miss,so what does this suggest given that you have had in your own words every test going.

As a stage 4 bowel cancer survivor l can tell you that l do not recognise any of the symptoms you describe pre cancer diagnosis,all l picked upon was a little stale bloodspots in my stools.

However, l recognise a whole raft of your problems post surgery and chemo/radio due to bowel having been compromised following successful cancer treatment which is now 9 years on from initial diagnosis

l could wake up every morning and attribute my grumpy tummy to cancer, the periods of loose stools too, or perhaps the spells of explosive wind, not forgetting the severe cramping. .l could stress myself ceaselessly and encourage these symptoms into new heights and duration, but rather l accept l have a compromised bowel, keep relaxed and ensure these episodes have the minimum impact possible

Having wrote the above ,let me say l have the utmost sympathy for those who suffer from any challenging constant bowel problems, they can be incessant and drag you down in a big way. l would certainly put permanent conditions like Chrons or IBS on the same level as cancers, in some ways more if they cannot be controlled or cured and are there for life

From what you write l would be greatly surprised if cancer was a problem that should concern you, rather its a case of discovering what is triggering your bowel to behave in the manner it is. l hope you can move forward with a little less stress and reach a definitive answer sooner rather than later,

                                   best wishes,

                                                             David

Thank-you for such an honest and kind reply, I am so sorry to hear you have been through my worst fears yourself and I can't begin to imagine how much you've suffered. I feel like such a baby complaining when people like yourself have been through the real deal and are still so strong and accepting of what you go through. I have cried reading your response, I haven't had this kind of reassurance or understanding shown to me before in all my years of struggling. People close to me tend to show support but then I see them quickly becoming subtly irritated that I'm still saying the same things and having the same concerns. You have reassured me a lot, I just hope now I can find some miracle fix for these dreadful symptoms because professionals are fond of saying there's nothing to diagnose but that doesn't make my symptoms any less real and I can't live a full life with these symptoms. Sometimes I think would it be easier to get a diagnosis of something not too bad, but something that warrants medication so at least I'd get some kind of relief and help. Ibs doesn't get taken seriously at all in my experience x

Hello again,

                   the frustrating thing is that doctors go in seeking the bullet holes so they can identify the type of wound they would look to treat.They do not start looking for a trigger until they have exhausted all those options and realise they could be dealing with a syndrome instead.Unfortunately this can drag on seemingly for ever.until a light bulb moment illumiatesa little more clarity onto your situation.

The bowel is such a complicated piece of equipment, governed by both physical and mental pressures which we all take very much for granted when allworks well, but disturbance of one small thing in what is a long complicated sequence chain can have out of all proportion effects.

All you can do is to keep batting away and continue to make the point that identifying what its not, is not the same as discovering what it is.

All of which makes breaking a leg seem such an easy option,

                                                                                                     take care,

                                                                                                                     David

You're exactly right, 10yrs now I've been poked and prodded and still I'm no further ahead but actually worse off, having lost large parts of myself and my life along the way. To be a 24yr old woman with no job, no income, no career prospects after I worked my butt off to get 1yr off graduating University, is absolutely gut wrenching and I feel like a total failure. I did have a very emotionally traumatic childhood which I do think could've triggered some sort of syndrome or issue with my gut. But it's still scary when symptoms begin changing and things go from constipated and not being able to go properly to explosive upset tummies waking you up at night (sorry for the gore), and this is shoved down people's throats constantly as a red flag for the big C. You have reassured me greatly, and another thing I'm trying to comfort myself with is surely I wouldn't have had 3 weeks where I felt great, my appetite was huge and things were okay after my last episode if it was something very bad. Maybe you'd know more on that too? Can symptoms come and go or are they usually constant? X

The thing about bowel cancers, they usually grow from polyps. A year and a half later, i highly doubt one has grown, then turned cancerous. It's usually a long process. So you've had a colonoscopy, and that's the gold standard test. They've done the correct thing. Done properly, stuff like IBS are usually done via a process of elimination. There is no test for ibs other than elimanation. Nothing found, then highly likely to be ibs. What the trigger for that is, has been well discussed already so i won't rehash old conversations.

I think the doctors are on a hiding to nothing in some cases. They ignore people, they get lambasted, they test people and they get lambasted for over testing. So with all those tests under your belt, I'd take that as there's nothing sinister at play down there. Had it been stomach cancer, you'd well and truly know about it by now after all this time.

No idea if you have tried this or not, but have you actually taken a food diary? Like, cutting out foods to see if symptoms get worse or better? A good way to start that is just eat plain foods. Stuff like rice etc. If things improve, introduce more exotic foods, and see how things evolve.  Could be a whole host of things and food intolerances can be pretty grim too.

Hi, thankyou for your comment. This is what I do try to tell myself regarding the colonoscopy that given there wasn't even any polyps found surely it'd be pretty impossible for something to have grown that quickly in 1.5yrs when BC is slow forming. Stomach cancer I think I'd have pain higher up anyway, which usually my pain is always quite low down. And as you say, I'd know about it by now, although my worry is always that "something new has formed recently", rather than it being there all along. I know I couldn't have had cancer for all these years but I worry that inflammation left untreated could cause it to come on at any moment and these new symptoms are my body trying to tell me something. As we've said, I know this is likely my anxiety, but that's always the thought process behind it. 

I have tried all kinds of elimination diets and food diaries and they never reveal much, sometimes I have a flare after eating things that don't usually ever cause flares and most times there is just no pattern at all to it. Also reading that nocturnal episodes of diarrhea aren't usual with ibs and is classed as another "red flag" symptom is scary. But I just never know anymore whats normal and what isn't, when you have health anxiety it's very hard to trust your instincts and know whether something is really wrong or not. 

Hello Again,

                  a compromised bowel is a perfidious beast, one moment all is sunshine and consistant,and suddenly out of the blue a loud marching band with a disagreeable attitude arrives to make your life hell for a while.before fading into the background leaving you completely exhausted, and so you begin yet another cycle that will rear its ugly head once more.

Trying to make sense of what is happening will see you in bedlam quicker than you can sprint to the loo.You can eat the same diet that will provoke both extremes of the spectrum, sit in a pattern of toileting ,and just when you think you have its measure or turned a corner,it fires off like a banshee with absolutely no sense of direction.

l have reached the stage where l am no longer surprised by my bowels capriciousness, accept all it can throw at me, or out of me for that matter. The impasse has been reached whereby do l live with my bowel or does my bowel live with me, the mutual acceptance of which resuting in fairly stressfree existence.

l am however somewhat fortunate to be closer to the end of my life than its beginning and as such am better able to accommodate a stroppy presence, so l can well appreciate the devastating effect it has on someone like yourself who has a life they want to lead stretching out in front of them and being attached to an anchor of despair preventing you from journeying past your horizon of hopes and desires.

Cancer will be a continuous downhill slide of symptoms, IBS, Chrons ,Colitis  ect can be a rollercoaster with periods of flares and lulls, but can be managed. Often these can be worse for the young but can get the worst excesses diluted with age.

Your medical team will get the answers you need given time,the only positive you can offer to this situation is to curb your frustration,which will lower your stress and be greatly beneficial to your situation,and yes l realise you know Rome was not built in a day, but you would lolly well like to make a start on it tomorrow,

                                    take care of yourself,

                                                                      David

Hi there, i know this was written over a year ago now but reading your words has made me feel as though i was reading my own. I was wondering if you had found anything at all that helped your situation?? Thanks in advance