To be worried this could be cancer

[breakdownbabe]

I'm 35, reasonably healthy up until this.

Past few weeks I've had chest pains, upper stomach pains, nausea, heartburn, I feel full after eating tiny amounts and a complete loss of appetite. I've lost over a stone in 2 weeks.

I've been to doctors.. a&e and urgent care centres. I've not had a camera though.

Lansoprazole hasn't helped. Docs keep saying it's likely gastritis or a stomach ulcer but I'm so sure it's got to be cancer stomach or oesophageal. I'm so so scared I'm in such a bad mental state. Has anyone had anything like this?

Have you had h pylori test?

Have you tried an alternative to Lanzoprazole? I tried that before getting changed to Omeprazole. Totally different results

@billyt really? No I haven't, did lansoprazole not work for you?

Someone on here suggested if you are getting nowhere with a drs referral to say the following:

‘can you put it on my record that you are refusing to refer me for further tests.’

fwiw my father had oesophageal cancer and the only symptom was reflux (for years and years) followed by a difficult in swallowing.

but I really think you need to be seen further with those symptoms.

It's much more likely not to be cancer. There are literally dozens of things it could be and fixating on it being cancer could be making health care people ctake you less seriously because you are being a bit irrational and all the symptoms you describe can be caused by anxiety.

Try to calm down. If it is gastritis or a stomach ulcer it will respond to appropriate treatment and you'll be fine. If it doesn't respond to that then they will run other tests and try other treatments.

It would be silly for docs to put everyone with your set of symptoms through a full cancer-detection process when 99.9% of them won't have cancer. What is sensible is to first look for and try to detect the probable ailments that will explain the symptoms in 90% of cases, and only do the more complex investigations on the remaining 10%.

I speak from the experience of going through multiple stages of diagnostic processes, where at each stage there were multiple possible non-cancer things that might have been found but weren't.

Trust in the process and stop obsessing about this one potential (and very much treatable) outcome. Part of the information the doctors need is to find out whether symptom severity changes according to how anxious or stressed you are

@OpusGiemuJavlo Thank you. Have you had cancer?
Do you think the anxiety could be causing my complete loss of appetite and inability to eat?

I'm watching this ......

3.5 weeks ago I went to bed feeling ok - ended up taking some painkillers on an empty stomach after wine due to my joint issues

Woke up sick as a dog and was ill for four days constant before going on holiday.

since then:

Feel starving with wind but after a few mouthfuls I'm full and if I eat too much I'm sick

Randomly feel sick

I'm actually out of the country until Thursday so I'm hoping its some form of gastritis which isn't settling down due to foreign food (although I usually eat anything) etc.

If it doesn't settle down properly in a few days of being home, I'm off to the docs.

I'm already on omeprazole due to taking painkillers

Yes I have, and it was found and treated and I made a full recovery - after a rational process to eliminate all the other possible explanations for my symptoms.

And yes anxiety can definitely cause a total loss of appetite. The digestive system is very dependent on mental state.

Or if it's not caused by anxiety there could also be various other problems in your digestive tract which could be triggered by a number of different issues totally unrelated to cancer e.g. an underactive thyroid to name just one.

Your gp will be on the case working through a list of possible causes. It's frustrating waiting for the process but there isn't a simple single test for "cancer" because there isn't a single illness of "cancer" - it's a huge category of potential illnesses, some of which can be easily detected and some more difficult, and some of which have an excellent pathway for treatment to full recovery and some are more complex. But there are also vast areas of medical specialisms that focus on a myriad of other ways the human body can go wrong and it may well be that one of those is applicable for you.

I do hope you feel better soon.

1 stones in 2 weeks is a massive amount of weight loss. Have you made this clear to the GP. Did you have a high bmi to start with? Is the weight loss explained in the sense that you’re eating a lot less or are you eating normally and losing weight?

I would be asking for a test for h pylori and gall stones.