u/Big_Seat2545

I (32M and healthy) was playing tennis about 2-3 months ago and driving back home, I started to get a lot of tightness in my chest. It wasn't going away, which scared me, and I thought I was having a heart attack.

I went to the doctors office and he did an ecg, chest x-ray, and echocardiogram, along with blood tests, and everything came back normal, despite the ecg being a little bit abnormal, though he wasn't worried. Ever since, I've had a lot of chest tightness and everyday I feel like I'm having a heart attack, which is extremely anxiety inducing for me.

There's no pain though and not much soreness, and it's pretty position dependent, with standing and sitting causing the tightness, while laying flat on my yoga mat and bending down like I'm touching my toes giving me relief. I'm going to physical therapy 2x a week and it helps a little bit, but can't say that I feel much better. I feel like no one really knows what's wrong and everyone has a different theory. Does this sound like costro, or something else? Seems like most people have pain with costro but luckily I don't. Thanks!

I'm (32M) a huge worry wart, and maybe like many of you, kept being bombarded with news on social media about younger people getting colon cancer, many times with little to no symptoms. I also read about how horrible the prep is, so basically I was a big ball of anxiety the last two months and almost cancelled it due to not being in the best physical or mental health atm. Symptoms wise, I've had loose stools for years, many times with bright red blood, and it got bad enough to where I couldn't exercise without having to use the restroom, so my doctor wanted me to do a colonoscopy just in case.

The day before the procedure, prep was not that bad. The drink, Suprep, isn't delicious by any means but very tolerable to get down. I literally mixed it with water and just sipped it for 20 or 30 minutes. I'm not exactly a picky eater but not adventurous either, so if I can easily get it down, I think many people can as well. After finishing, it took me 30 minutes or an hour and then I felt the urge to use the bathroom. At first I was going a few times an hour and then after the first hour or two, I'd go about once an hour after that for that next few hours. It was very tolerable...if you've ever had food poisoning, that is much, much worse! I actually didn't go enough to where anything was irritated down there, though I admit I'm used to going a lot, and if you're constipated, you have more to get out of you. So overall, day 1 was very tolerable, prep wise, with no issues.

My colonoscopy was very early in the morning, which was the one negative thing about this experience. I didn't sleep well the night before because I was very nervous about what the doctor was going to find and I also had to wake up much earlier to prep and then get to the hospital early. I probably ended up going to bed around 2 AM and then had to wake up at 4 AM, so on two hours of sleep that really increased my anxiety. The prep the day of wasn't bad at all; it was even better than the day before because you have less stuff to get out of you and it doesn't take as long.

Once I got to the hospital it was smooth sailing from there. The doctor and nurses were very nice and assured me that this is a very safe, standard procedure and they didn't seem worried in the slightest, which put me at ease. Since I'm on many meds, due to other health reasons, they administered me a light dose of sedation (forgot what it was called but it was administered via IV) and I was somewhat awake and aware during the procedure but I didn't have any pain. I had no polyps and everything looked good. He just took some biopsies for microscopic colitis and I was on my way, which was great news! Now I'm sitting at home after taking a nap, and my butt is a little sore but nothing too bad. I pooped out a little bit of blood, but that was probably from the biopsies, which is normal from what I read.

Basically, for anyone out there reading all the horror stories, those are not the norm and people get colonoscopies all the time with no bad findings, it's just that those people don't post on social media etc. Social media companies like TikTok also want you to stay on the app, so if you engage with a video of someone having a terrible colonoscopy outcome, they are going to keep pushing those types of videos to you and the loop continues. Hopefully this gives people a little bit of peace of mind and I'm happy to answer any questions.