Polyp found 4mm - I'm only 31 years old!

Digestive health
1

Hi all,

Had my endoscopy and sigmoidscopy today. Without sedation. It wasn't very nice I have to say. I had 3 biopsy taken from my stomach and 2 from my colon. They found a polyp 4mm. The Dr removed it and said it doesn't look cancerous but obviously ive got to wait for my biopsy results.

My stomach is clear and so is the rest of my colon.

Has anyone my age had a polyp?? Do I need to panic? What I've been reading on the Internet hasn't filled me with confidence.

I was relying to at least have a an ulcer or hernia to explain the pains ive been getting. So what do I do now?? I can't just live in pain sad

Does anyone have any ideas of what could be wrong with me? (Please see my previous posts)

Thank you for reading

Gem

2

hi Gem, was this found in you gallbladder or somewhere else. i think polyps can be found almost anywhere and i think if they are fairly small they are generally nothing to worry about- i only say this because i had a gallladder scan a few months ago and she said she saw a tiny shadow of a polyp but nothing to worry about. at least now they have detected it and you should be all sorted soon. try not to worry.

3

Hi Gem,

Well i hope everything will turn out okay. May i ask what are your symptoms? Always having stomach pains or abdominal pain?

4

Hi carls1981,

It was found in my lower colon, just concerns me when you read about it that it rarely occurs under 50!

Gem

5

What are your symptoms Gem?

6

Hi Jeff,

My symptoms are long but I will list them for you smile

Upper left abdominal pain under my ribs that raidiates into my side and back. It's usually early morning and sometimes relieved after eating. It can last a few minutes or hours stretching into days but I don't have much if any pain at night.

Upper right abdominal pain to the far right side that riadiates into my back and shoulder blade. It's aggravated by fatty foods (chocolate and ice cream are the worst). I've had one bad flare up of pain in January. But the pain is fairly constant now.

I have loose stools that range in colour from Browns to slight yellows and burnt oranges. Sometimes it has undigested food sometimes it doesn't.

I have intigestion and heartburn when eating fruit and drinking fruit juice.

I have pain around my belly button. I also have bad stabbing pain on my right lower abdomen.

I have had 2 ultrasounds 1st showed fatty liver (pancreas, spleen, gallbladder normal) 2nd showed liver as completley normal.

Mri - normal spleen, pancreas, liver,gallbladder and kidneys.

MRCP- normal

The following bloods are normal:- full blood count, clotting screen, liver function tests, celiac, hepititis,hiv, auto antibodies, rhumatoid antibodies, bone profile, amylase, lipase, tripsin. I think I may of missed a couple.

I was refer to surgeon and it was assumed it was my gallbladder, he said no it's chronic pancreatitis.

I saw a gastro consultant who told me it's not chronic pancreatitis it's IBS.

I'm so lost now and I'm so fed up of being in pain and having no answers! sad

It's now been a year since this all started and I feel no further forward appart from adding more things to the list sad

Any help will be gratefully recieved.

Gem

7

Thanx for a quite detailed response. I appreciate your time. I am sorry to hear that you are struggling in pain.

I have stomach issues myself but not to that extent. More like an on and off diarrhea, small soft pieces stool. Your stool mostly what color? And is it more like a diarrhea side? Watery loose stool? And how do you rate your pain level? 1-10? Sorry if i asked to many questions smile cuz i am just curious and i am same age as yours.

8

It's soft loose, still has shape but ragged edges. It's never water diarrohea. They are formed of small pieces but are thinner than a normal stool sometimes it even looks like then have corners?

One day my stools are brown, the next day they have an orange tinge to them and I've had them go very light aswell with a yellowish tone to it.

My pain ranges from a 3/4 to a 8/9 on a bad day.

Gem

9

So more like a rainbow color? and it sometimes pale in color? Like white or gray-ish? But you poop everyday? You're not constipated?

have you gone through colonoscopy?

10

Hi Gem

Firstly I must congratulate you for having a flexi and an endoscopy without sedation. I have had quite a few colonscopies and flexis and only once had no sedation and swore from that moment, I would also have it.

Secondly, I am sorry to hear that you are suffering with quite a lot of symptoms and have been passed from one person to another.

I had 75% of your symptoms but a colonscopy and flexi confirmed that I had ulcerated colitis.  Obviously your recent test would have shown this, if you had it.

I haven't had a polyp but I know if they do find one (in a patient with my condition) they take a quick biopsy and then burn them off or the like.  I was told that these polyps are very rarely a cause of concern but I am going on what I have been told by my IBD Nurse.

I hope your pain stops soon and your results come back clear.

 

11

If you are experiencing stomach pains that radiates to your back, jaws, shoulder and etc in quite a regular basis that is always alarming and warrants a visit to a specialist.

I am not an expert myself but i am a big worrier so small things sometimes worrys me too much. But we need to be calm and relax cuz anxiety and stress could just add up to a problem smile

12

Hi Jeff

I hope you dont mind but I have been following this thread.  The alarming things you are thinking of, but aren't saying, are the symptoms I experienced and was encouraged by my IBD Nurse to see my GP, which I did and they found what I think you are referring to!  

So, yes I agree that if Gem is still experiencing these symptoms you mention, she should get them checked out.

13

Hi Silip,

May i ask what are your symptoms?

14

Mines are I am having soft loose stool for a while now. I never had a good size log stool well not that i remember..i could've maybe when i was younger. Well anyways i experience stomach pain sometimes but it gets relieve after a bm.

I go every morning sometimes twice in a row, always soft ones that are into pieces not a long ones. I am more on the diarrhea side. Diarrhea on and off every week. Sometimes a diarrhea wakes me up in the middle of the night a stomach pain that gets me the urge to empty my bowels and then i will feel relief.

I do sometimes have yellow mucus in a bad diarrhea day. But it happens in my 2nd or 3rd bm of the day. My 1st bowel bm in the morning always looks medium to sortha light brown.

So any insights of what i might have? My sister-in-law an RN thinks i may have a bacterial infection. I going to have my bloodworks later, this is the first time i'm gonna have it checked out.

15

Hi There

My symptoms for Ulcerated Colitis, started off when I started to become constipated on a regular basis.  Usually about 4 or 5 days later I would have the runs but assumed this was because I had been constipated. This went on for 6 months and during that time, I experienced abdo cramps which helped when I passed wind but if the stool never moved the cramps would become more intense.  I also had mucus but a carried on and thought it was just part and parcel of being constipated.

After about 3 months, I noticed a little blood on wiping myself and again assumed this was due to be constipated and maybe I had piles.  It wasn't till 6 months later that I finally gave in and saw my GP as I started to pass clots of blood and nothing else. 

A colonoscopy was performed and I was told I had Ulcerated Colitis. My descending colon and rectum were completely inflammed.  I was then referred to the Gastro Consultant and my IBD Nurse, who are absolutely fantastic.

With regards to symptoms of the jaw, shoulder pain etc that you mention, this was something I experienced last November which turned out to a Pulmonary Embolism which, I have been told, UC patients are more likely to experience along with DVT's.

16

Hey thanx for the response smile

It was nice in a way to know that you have been diagnosed and you know what your problem is. I mean i've read a lot of threads lately with different stomach/intestinal problems and they had been checked and no results.

I haven't experienced anything blood related thanks goodness. Blood in a stool can cause hemorrhoids and others. Occult blood is a blood that can't be seen by naked eye, so i hope nothing like that is in me.

My main problem is just mines are always soft and not fully formed stool (normal size they say) i experience lower abdominal pain but after i release it, i feel a lot better.

What could be mines? Any idea?

17

I did not experience blood for at first so was not bothered by my symptoms till I did pass it.  You don't always have blood loss with Ulcerative Colitis.  I am not sure what you might have, sorry.

Have a look at the Bristol Stool Chart.  This was what my Consultant showed me when I had to describe my stools!

I have not passed a normal stool now for approximately 2 years and ironically this is something that I miss....

I hope you find answers to your problems and I think you should, as suggested, go for a blood test and this may throw up something and will show if you have any inflammation.

Sorry but did you say that you have had any tests like a flexi sigmoidoscopy?  

18

Hi Gem.

I had a small polyp removed that they found by chance on colonoscopy last year, they biopsied it along with more tissue samples taken, the polyp was hyperplastic which are the most common type of polyp. these types rarely cause any problem, but they tend to remove any polyps found as a matter of course anyway. like you, it did worry me though, & waiting for results doesn't help the worrying. I have colitis, suspected ibs, & have just been diagnosed with bile salt malabsorption & fructose malabsorption too. Don't know if you remember our conversations on this site with "busabasher" a month or so ago, we were talking about how some foods go straight through us, stomach ache, diarhhea etc, well bile salt malabsorption can cause all those symptoms, so may be worth you asking for the same test myself & busabasher had - the sehcat test. you swallow a capsule & then have 2 scans a week apart to see if you are losing bile salt through your colon. I have started treatment 4days ago & so far all the strange noises, gurgling, & fizzing & bubbling sensations in my abdomen have almost totally stopped, no diarrhhea yesterday or today so far, so somethings changing, waiting for more progress/relief. You said you have thin stools - so do I, & it is very painful having a bm as I have a chronic fissure(tear) at tail end of rectum due to ongoing symptoms which bleeds at least once a day when doing a bm. It feels like you have glass in your rectum when you do a bm. I have been told by specialist that the muscle spasming in rectum causes the stools to be thin. When the muscle spasms when i go, it often feels like i haven't finished going to toilet. I just wondered Gem if your stools are thin do you get any of the same symptoms when you do a bm? I am using gtn ointment(prescription) to help the tear heal, but it's very painful still at present, although i'm hoping with bile salt problem being addressed will reduce my frequent bm's & diarrhea & that will then allow the tear to heal. take care, will follow your progress.

19

Thank you for your reply looloo. I will definitely mention to my consultant about the bile salt malabsorbtion and the sehcat scan.

I think I'm gonna be hitting a brick wall though. When I saw him I gave him my symptoms he wrote them down, checked my tummy by tapping on it and said Ibs. I said are you sure, he said yes, then showed me a sheet with info on it about IBS. I queried weight loss, indigested food, unable to put weight on, chemically smelling stools, pain on left and right sides. He said all IBS?? He said he would do endoscopy to check for ulcer and I asked him for colonoscopy due to loose stools for over half a year. He agreed but said no more tests for me after this. So I think it's gonna be hard to me to persuade him to do more tests. My GP has re-run my LFTs, Amylase, Vit D and is going to re test my feacal Elastase. So at least she's trying! I begged her for a Hida scan to check my gall bladder, she said with normal scans and LFTs they won't consider it. My app has come thru to see the consultant Its 12th May, so I will get my biopsy results then too.

Gem smile

20

Hi Gem, glad to hear your reply, was wondering if you were ok as you hadn't posted on here for a while. When are you having your colonoscopy? I would see what your biopsies come back with from the sigmoidoscopy & colonoscopy, as they may well diagnose something like colitis. If they come back clear & your consultant is still saying you have ibs, ask him to do sehcat test then to exclude bile acid malabsorption, as you have read that it is common for people with ibs to actually have bile acid problem-it mimics the symptoms of ibs. As many as 1 in 3 ibs sufferers have this problem which can be easily treated/corrected with capsules or sachet drink daily. These facts make it justified for you to ask. Try not to worry, & deal with 1 issue at a time as it comes without thinking too far ahead & what if's; it's frustrating & all the time it takes, & I totally get what you say "so what do i do now - live in pain?" but to stop you getting really down,stressed & upset by it, it really does help if you can program yourself to take tests, results, next steps one thing at a time. take care & good luck with your appt on 12/5.