Re: Blood in my stool, please help!!

>There is blood in my stool and I'm extremely nervous about it, any insight would be greatly appreciated!

I'm really sorry to hear of your problem.

My advice comes the hard way: my husband is in danger of losing his life to colon cancer now, though with radiation and chemotherapy nowadays his chances of surviving his trauma are pretty good. He is going through hell, though. If only he'd had a colonoscopy years ago, when the precancerous growth could have easily been removed.

Don't delay getting a colonoscopy.

I'm not sure what the cutoff dates are for the government's Affordable Healthcare are, but you should look into it pronto; I do recall that there are cutoff dates. I sort of think I recall that with the Affordable Healthcare Act (hope I'm remembering the official name correctly here - AKA Obamacare), insurers are prohibited from failing to cover preexisting conditions.

Here's where you need to go:

(Aargh! I had to remove the website address link in order to post this message! Anyway, do a Google search for Affordable Healthcare government website and you can find it.)

***I just visited and the webpage said the cutoff day is January 15 for 20116 coverage.***

Also, don't delay based on a false diagnosis of "hemorroids." The only person who ought to be making such a diagnosis is the MD specialist that does the colonoscopy. Sometimes a GP can get that diagnosis wrong by a cursory look. My husband told his GP when getting him as a new patient that he had a hemorrhoid, and the GP took his word for it. So did the urologist, I guess, when he had a prostate biopsy done. Essentially, my husband had a self-diagnosis for about 20 years, all the while his slow-growing "precancerous" type of rectal polyp continued to grow slowly.

I'm not going to go into all the details here, but please don't sit around and speculate about what's causing the bleeding. Get the cause tied down by someone well-qualified to judge: a specialist in gastroenterology.

Colon cancer is more likely the older you get, and isn't particularly likely in your case, but that's no consolation if you happen to be someone with that particular problem.

My own health is exceptionally poor. I probably won't have the focus to keep up with the back and forth here, but this is really all I have to say on the subject.

One last thing: If anyone reading this is age 50 over older, please make sure to get a colonoscopy! It's an easier process than it used to be. If I can get through it with diabetes and lots worse than that too, then you can too. It's not that big a deal nowadays, and well worth the small amount of trouble to you to get that reassurance.

My husband only had his colonoscopy because he was losing enough blood that he actually was becoming slightly anemic. Don't wait until the problem smacks you in the face! Get the colonoscopy pronto.

Best wishes, Mary
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