Paranoia..

just4Brooks
just4Brooks Member Posts: 980 Member
edited March 2014 in Colorectal Cancer #1
This sucks for me and I’m sure that some of you are going through the same thing. It’s this crazy paranoia. I had my iliostomy reversal a while ago and now find myself studying my poop. Is it big enough? What’s that strange color thing in it? Is it long enough. Then if I cough I’m wandering if it’s cancer . If my head hurts it’s got to be cancer. Hip hurting? It’s got to be bone cancer. This is nuts!!


Life is funny sometimes
Brooks

Comments

  • pluckey
    pluckey Member Posts: 484 Member
    #2
    Aaah, the ever-present
    Aaah, the ever-present cancer paranoia. I go through bouts of it, then get over it then some other dark thought takes over.

    The study of one's poop will be our 2nd careers Brooks! Poopologists, we are.

    I'm afraid to make appts for a mammogram and Pap smear, both put on hold during the last year. I don't want to know if the damn cancer is lurking somewhere else, and frankly I am SICK of "procedures" i drank my umpteenth contrast goop yesterday for a CAT scan, I don't want any orafices looked at or invaded or appendages smashed.

    Peggy
  • dianetavegia
    dianetavegia Member Posts: 1,942 Member
    #3
    LOLOLOL!
    Poopologist! Love it!

    I've put off my follow up colonoscopy. First I had to wait til after the CT scan because I couldn't afford both. Now I'm waiting for school to end so Jim won't have to take off work. Excuses, Excuses! I'm with you Peggy. I just want it all to go away! Never think of it again.

    Brooks, I think we're all paranoid about cancer or is paranoid the right word? :-D
  • Jaylo969
    Jaylo969 Member Posts: 824 Member
    #4
    Paranoia
    Brooks you are alone in this specific type of paranoia. My PCP put me on Ativan and then came back into the room 3 times practically begging me to take it at night and any other time I got 'anxious'. I am so afraid of drugs because my sister died a drug addict and my doc knows this. That is why he kept on & on reassuring me that I would not get addicted and IF I do he will get me off of it easily.

    It HAS helped, although I only allow myself 1 mg at night.Nothing in the day...I'm paranoid about drugs too, and doctors who are negligent, and mean nurses, and dirty hospitals.......Oh crap! I think I need to be committed.

    Take a deep breath Brooks. You have been through so much. It is not abnormal what you are going through.And now I am sure someone wiser and more in the groove of things will come along and give us some really helpful advice.

    -Pat
  • RickMurtagh
    RickMurtagh Member Posts: 587 Member
    #5
    too close
    I am too close to takedown to consider anything but keeping poop inside me for more than thirty seconds. Perhaps in a few weeks I will catch up to where you are and have some free time to become paranoid.

    As for the study of poop, what could be a cooler hobby than that - makes for great dinner conversation, just ask my wife. Wait, I forgot, since takedown she has stopped inviting people over for dinner. My interest in poop is not as bad as when I had the bag - ofc I had to switch to an opaque bag - I was becoming a social liability with my obsession.

    Here is to hoping all your aches and pains are just you getting older, and your poop getting firmer! Perhaps someday soon you will pass a stool much like before all this cancer mess and the obsession will pass!
  • abrub
    abrub Member Posts: 2,174 Member
    #6
    pluckey said:

    Aaah, the ever-present
    Aaah, the ever-present cancer paranoia. I go through bouts of it, then get over it then some other dark thought takes over.

    The study of one's poop will be our 2nd careers Brooks! Poopologists, we are.

    I'm afraid to make appts for a mammogram and Pap smear, both put on hold during the last year. I don't want to know if the damn cancer is lurking somewhere else, and frankly I am SICK of "procedures" i drank my umpteenth contrast goop yesterday for a CAT scan, I don't want any orafices looked at or invaded or appendages smashed.

    Peggy

    Empathy, here Peggy!
    I hit a point where I was taking meds through every available orifice - I had to keep track that I was putting the right med in the right place!

    Also sick of procedures - can't wait to get my surgery done next month, and hopefully be done (at least with surgery) forever.

    CAT scans and mammos will be every year for life; colonoscopies every 2-3 years, and who knows what else. Can't they leave us alone!!!
  • sheri22
    sheri22 Member Posts: 273
    #7
    YEP I know the parania
    Yep I know how it feels to be paronoid about the ca, that finnally left after I had my CT PET scan done, even though they told me the ca in pelvic area had growen some I was so excited to know the one in my lung was stable and it wasnt anywhere else in my body every headache every pain I kept thinking it was somewhere else so it didnt even phase me about the ca growing in the pelvic area until later hows that for being paranoid
  • robinvan
    robinvan Member Posts: 1,012
    #8
    Paranoia!
    I know the feeling. Last year I had scrotal/testicular pain and eventually pain in my tailbone and other problems in my "pelvic region". It was in the back of my mind that it could be a recurrence. We checked everything, I had a urologist investigating. He even ordered an ultrasound of my testicles! Quite the experience!

    Finally my GP says... "Rob, your CEA is low, your liver scans are good, your Oncologist is happy, your surgeon is happy, when will you be satisfied?" I said... "When my body agrees with them all." OK... bone scan, BANG recurrence in the sacrum. All the other problems were neuropathic gremlins caused as the cancer ate its way through my pelvic nerves! This took 7 months. In retrospect I should have been more paranoid and more persistent. Instead I fiddle-farted around with antibiotics and pain killers. How often do we have to learn this lesson!

    So... it is hard to know where to draw the line between appropriate vigilance and paranoia. Hip hurting? Check it out!

    The fact of the matter is, it is in the very nature of metastatic colon cancer to recur.

    Cancer sure sucks!

    Rob; in Vancouver
  • robinvan
    robinvan Member Posts: 1,012
    #9
    RickMurtagh said:

    too close
    I am too close to takedown to consider anything but keeping poop inside me for more than thirty seconds. Perhaps in a few weeks I will catch up to where you are and have some free time to become paranoid.

    As for the study of poop, what could be a cooler hobby than that - makes for great dinner conversation, just ask my wife. Wait, I forgot, since takedown she has stopped inviting people over for dinner. My interest in poop is not as bad as when I had the bag - ofc I had to switch to an opaque bag - I was becoming a social liability with my obsession.

    Here is to hoping all your aches and pains are just you getting older, and your poop getting firmer! Perhaps someday soon you will pass a stool much like before all this cancer mess and the obsession will pass!

    Light brown floaters...
    That's what I like to see!

    LOL... Rob; in Vancouver
  • snommintj
    snommintj Member Posts: 601
    #10
    robinvan said:

    Paranoia!
    I know the feeling. Last year I had scrotal/testicular pain and eventually pain in my tailbone and other problems in my "pelvic region". It was in the back of my mind that it could be a recurrence. We checked everything, I had a urologist investigating. He even ordered an ultrasound of my testicles! Quite the experience!

    Finally my GP says... "Rob, your CEA is low, your liver scans are good, your Oncologist is happy, your surgeon is happy, when will you be satisfied?" I said... "When my body agrees with them all." OK... bone scan, BANG recurrence in the sacrum. All the other problems were neuropathic gremlins caused as the cancer ate its way through my pelvic nerves! This took 7 months. In retrospect I should have been more paranoid and more persistent. Instead I fiddle-farted around with antibiotics and pain killers. How often do we have to learn this lesson!

    So... it is hard to know where to draw the line between appropriate vigilance and paranoia. Hip hurting? Check it out!

    The fact of the matter is, it is in the very nature of metastatic colon cancer to recur.

    Cancer sure sucks!

    Rob; in Vancouver

    You know what they say
    Just because you feel like someone, or something, is out to get you, doesn't mean that it isn't.
  • ketziah35
    ketziah35 Member Posts: 1,145
    #11
    Got you beat and do what you have to do to maintain
    Poop and pee can tell you a lot. We note changes in my moms poop and pee patterns in a day planner. The width and color are logged. The consistency is logged using the Bristol stool chart. My siblings do the same now. We are just more in tuned with our bodies. I don't think that is a problem. If you end up in the ER everytime you get a cough then that is something different.

    Ktz
  • pepebcn
    pepebcn Member Posts: 6,331 Member
    #12
    ketziah35 said:

    Got you beat and do what you have to do to maintain
    Poop and pee can tell you a lot. We note changes in my moms poop and pee patterns in a day planner. The width and color are logged. The consistency is logged using the Bristol stool chart. My siblings do the same now. We are just more in tuned with our bodies. I don't think that is a problem. If you end up in the ER everytime you get a cough then that is something different.

    Ktz

    Same to me l forced my doc to another
    colonoscopy after 4 months of my resection , due to strange texture, color, form etc
    and was nothing in there normal consequences of the surgery.
    Have fun! Don't look stool is nasty! LOL!

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