Saz94
Senior Member (Voting Rights)
How bad do loose stools need to be for it to be a possible sign of bowel cancer?
(Edit: for the women reading this, please also be aware that a change in bowel habit can be a possible sign of ovarian cancer.)
I would class my loose stools as 'mild annoyance', I don't need medical help for them, but just feel I need to be cautious as I know somebody who died of bowel cancer after his GP wrote his persistent loose stools off as stress-related (until the cancer caused a big blockage in his bowel which resulted in him getting diagnosed)
The NHS website says go to your GP if you've had a persistent change in your stools. Well I don't know if mine is persistent? Like, a year ago I *never* had loose stools, a few months ago I started getting occasional loose stools (less than once a week), and nowadays I get loose stools at least a couple of times a week. But even then, I can be pooing normally at one point, then a couple hours later some poo comes out as loose stool.
If I didn't have ME then I'd just ask my GP about it, but I do have ME, and dealing with doctors is so tiring, and even if I see the doctor and they say "that's nothing to be concerned about", I won't know whether I can trust that they're correct about that, or if they're just saying that because they view me as an over-anxious woman?
It is true that as a twenty-something woman I am hardly in the category of people likely to get bowel cancer, but the person I know who died of bowel cancer was a young man in his 30s, which isn't exactly a high risk group either.
Please don't just reply saying talk to a doctor; I will probably do that, but I don't know whether I can trust the doctor to assess me correctly anyway (after all, the guy I know who died of bowel cancer had been told by his GP that his stools probably weren't anything to worry about), so I need to know what their response ought to be, so that I'll know whether I need to get a second opinion!
(Edit: for the women reading this, please also be aware that a change in bowel habit can be a possible sign of ovarian cancer.)
I would class my loose stools as 'mild annoyance', I don't need medical help for them, but just feel I need to be cautious as I know somebody who died of bowel cancer after his GP wrote his persistent loose stools off as stress-related (until the cancer caused a big blockage in his bowel which resulted in him getting diagnosed)
The NHS website says go to your GP if you've had a persistent change in your stools. Well I don't know if mine is persistent? Like, a year ago I *never* had loose stools, a few months ago I started getting occasional loose stools (less than once a week), and nowadays I get loose stools at least a couple of times a week. But even then, I can be pooing normally at one point, then a couple hours later some poo comes out as loose stool.
If I didn't have ME then I'd just ask my GP about it, but I do have ME, and dealing with doctors is so tiring, and even if I see the doctor and they say "that's nothing to be concerned about", I won't know whether I can trust that they're correct about that, or if they're just saying that because they view me as an over-anxious woman?
It is true that as a twenty-something woman I am hardly in the category of people likely to get bowel cancer, but the person I know who died of bowel cancer was a young man in his 30s, which isn't exactly a high risk group either.
Please don't just reply saying talk to a doctor; I will probably do that, but I don't know whether I can trust the doctor to assess me correctly anyway (after all, the guy I know who died of bowel cancer had been told by his GP that his stools probably weren't anything to worry about), so I need to know what their response ought to be, so that I'll know whether I need to get a second opinion!
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