6 weeks of blood in my stool and still no real answers
Hey all,
I honestly know I’m probably not going to get any answers from Reddit, but I think I just need to get this off my chest because it’s been stressing me out for the last 6 weeks.
I’ve had blood in my stool for around 6 weeks now. I’ve had blood tests which showed inflammation, but my stool tests came back negative for infection, parasites and viruses.
I ended up in the ER and had a CT scan, which was clear apart from them saying it basically looked like I had diarrhoea. I also had a flexi-sig and proctoscopy, and they said my colon looked inflamed.
The weird thing is that the blood is mostly at the end of the stool rather than mixed throughout it. When I wipe, it’s more of a pinkish colour (it was bright red for the first 3 weeks) with what looks like mucus.
Then, about 3.5 weeks after the bleeding started, I noticed a lump around my perineum/anal area. I went to the doctor and he said it was an external haemorrhoid. I was given antibiotics and Proctosedyl. The lump has pretty much disappeared now, and I actually noticed it got noticeably smaller after I had some bleeding from it. So I’m assuming that’s probably a separate issue, although who knows at this point.
The good news is that things have definitely improved. I was initially going to the toilet around 4–6 times a day and that’s now down to about 2–3. The bleeding also completely stopped for about a week.
And then, of course, it started again.
I’m currently on holiday, drinking more alcohol than usual and definitely drinking less water than I normally would, so maybe that’s contributing, but it’s just frustrating to finally think things were settling down and then see blood again.
For the most part stool is runny/liquidy.
I’m not really looking for anyone to diagnose me. I just needed somewhere to vent because 6 weeks of seeing blood every time you go to the toilet is pretty damn stressful, especially when you’ve had multiple tests and still don’t really know what’s going on.
Hopefully the upcoming follow-up/colonoscopy in a few months gives me some actual answers because I’m getting pretty tired of wondering what the hell is going on.