Now you have me worried, just had the third cancellation of my appointment with the dermatology specialist this am.
Bowel cancer….
- Thread starter Jeebs
- Start date
Bavarianbrit
Well-Known Member
We buried a 54 year old gent yesterday in our village graveyard who had died from a brain tumour.
TringSaint
Well-Known Member
Yeah, I had a patch the size of a 2p coin on my upper cheek which would scab up but never go away. Was there for a year or more before my chiropractor noticed it and said it looked like sun damage. I thought it was my face veil that was irritating my skin as it flared up more in the winter months when I am out shooting a lot.
Got it checked and after 4 weeks of efudix it’s all gone.
I also used the cream on other parts of my face /head and it picked up a few more areas of damage (it only affects the pre-cancerous cells, not the normal ones) so you just have to accept that you will resemble an over baked sausage roll for a few weeks (and it’s quite painful if the area is on your face btw) but once it’s done then it’s done.
Flash G 74
Well-Known Member
Hello, It is good they have reduced the age to 50 for Bowel Cancer testing kits
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I’m blown away by all the kind words, genuinely. I’m not one to talk to people about my problems, let alone to strangers, but this really is something that needs shouting about!
If you have sons, daughters, friends, colleagues, whoever please tell them cancer isn’t the preserve of people past a certain age! There’s 3 of us that all went to school together, 1 has died from it and 2 of us are still here but living with cancer!
My symptoms that ignored were as follows:
Unexplained weight loss - I didn’t realise at the time as I was running and training a lot, but I got strangely thin!
Loss of appetite - I was eating 1 meal a day when working physically demanding 12hr shifts.
Mood/personality changes - I was irritable and just a bit of a nightmare to be around at times which just wasn’t me. I’m a laid back and easy going bloke.
Night sweats - I would wake up in the night and be dripping in sweat lying on a bedsheet that was soaking wet like it had just come out the wash!
Tiredness - On my days off, I’d not be getting out of bed until around lunchtime and still feel exhausted.
A change in life circumstances seemed to halt a lot of these symptoms and I associated most of them with a pretty rubbish period of my life. A nasty relationship breakdown and a death in the family (ironically from cancer) could bring on any of the above!
I then started to gain weight in despite not changing my diet or exercise habits. Turns out that this was the point at which the tumour had begun to really develop and it was my body preparing itself for illness.
Then the bleeding started, initially not much, but then as the months went on it became dark old blood as well as fresh red blood. Then came crippling stomach cramps and a constant need to go to the toilet! I put up with this for around 5-6 months before actually going to the doctors!
This is just a rough idea of the symptoms I had. According to the doctors, night sweats are a massive indicator of the possibility of a cancer.
If you have sons, daughters, friends, colleagues, whoever please tell them cancer isn’t the preserve of people past a certain age! There’s 3 of us that all went to school together, 1 has died from it and 2 of us are still here but living with cancer!
My symptoms that ignored were as follows:
Unexplained weight loss - I didn’t realise at the time as I was running and training a lot, but I got strangely thin!
Loss of appetite - I was eating 1 meal a day when working physically demanding 12hr shifts.
Mood/personality changes - I was irritable and just a bit of a nightmare to be around at times which just wasn’t me. I’m a laid back and easy going bloke.
Night sweats - I would wake up in the night and be dripping in sweat lying on a bedsheet that was soaking wet like it had just come out the wash!
Tiredness - On my days off, I’d not be getting out of bed until around lunchtime and still feel exhausted.
A change in life circumstances seemed to halt a lot of these symptoms and I associated most of them with a pretty rubbish period of my life. A nasty relationship breakdown and a death in the family (ironically from cancer) could bring on any of the above!
I then started to gain weight in despite not changing my diet or exercise habits. Turns out that this was the point at which the tumour had begun to really develop and it was my body preparing itself for illness.
Then the bleeding started, initially not much, but then as the months went on it became dark old blood as well as fresh red blood. Then came crippling stomach cramps and a constant need to go to the toilet! I put up with this for around 5-6 months before actually going to the doctors!
This is just a rough idea of the symptoms I had. According to the doctors, night sweats are a massive indicator of the possibility of a cancer.
Flash G 74
Well-Known Member
Hello, , My test kit came back good earlier this year, Cannot say the same for the PSA but hey life goes on
A very useful checklist, thank you.
Not sure if it will help, but one of the guests who comes out with us has a stoma, and other than occasionally having to take a few moments to sort things it hasn't affected our stalking outings, and he still regularly knocks over muntjac and roe. Also he recently went to Africa on a safari, with great success.
He has wholeheartedly embraced the words in your first post, namely "maximise the time you have, enjoy life and the world around you". A fine philosophy
.
As @willie_gunn says, a very useful checklist to give people reason to consider what could be going on internally.
My only symptom was the occasional, very heavy blood discharge and feeling the need to dump when there was actually nothing to shi*t!
Unlike @Jeebs, after only a couple of heavy blood discharges, I contacted my GP Surgery. Please don't anyone wait 5 or 6 months!!
I have nothing but praise and gratitude for my GP surgery and all in the North Devon NHS who treated me and are still monitoring me for another 12 months to get me to 5 years post surgery.
I would recommend to anyone who has major abdominal surgery, take heed of the warnings to give yourself plenty of time for things to heal, don't try lifting and pulling deer carcases, or lifting heavy motorcycle parts
without having good abdominal support in place!I now have two hernias, 1 incisional and 1 parastomal which are more life disruptive than my permanent stoma.
Thanks to @Jeebs for starting this thread, hopefully it will be good advice for anyone who experiences any of the mentioned symptoms.
phildsmith69
Well-Known Member
Thanks for sharing your journey
This really should be the main take away from my experience. If it doesn’t seem right, it’s probably not!
Young(ish) and stupid!
Another thing that you should ALL be aware of…
Bowel screening programme tests (the qFIT stick tests) measure the amount of digested blood in your stool. You get sent these as part of the bowel screening programme, in the post unannounced. For bowel screening a ‘positive’ or ‘abnormal’ result triggers investigation with colonoscopy. But a positive test on bowel screening requires a quite strongly positive test. So with bowel screening, if there are 100 patients with a bowel cancer who are tested only 50 cancers will be found.
This is different to patients who go to their GP with symptoms - here a much more weakly positive test triggers investigation with colonoscopy. (Such that a negative or normal qfit means the likelihood of a cancer is about 1/1000).
Why am I telling you this? Because as a consultant colorectal surgeon I see patients weekly with worrying symptoms who think they can’t have a tumour because their screening was negative , and have delayed seeing their GP.
Please, if you have worrying symptoms, see you GP and do a qFIT.
