Should I cancel my colonoscopy?
For reference, I’m 22 so pretty young for a colonoscopy.
I’ve had IBS symptoms for the past couple of years, mainly diarrhea shortly/immediately after waking up in the mornings and after meals sometimes. I sometimes have a “stinging” pain in my lower abdomen and I get a dull pain on the left and lower left of my abdomen sometimes, but nothing really painful. I also feel nauseous and have reflux/early satiety sometimes.
There are times when my symptoms are worse and times where they’re not occurring as frequently. A couple times when it was occurring bad I went to the GI doctor and was tested for H-pylori (negative), stool test, and blood work, which mostly came back normal except I have iron deficiency which could be related to periods (I’ve had two iron infusions before and now on iron pills).
I accepted that I just have IBS, and to be honest for the most part it isn’t terrible to deal with. But a couple weeks ago I started having rectal bleeding. The first time it happened I just peed and noticed blood in the toilet, and it was pinkish red when I wiped. I then started noticing blood in/on stool, sometimes paired with pinkish red when I wiped and other times with nothing when wiping. A couple times there was bright red blood. In total I had rectal bleeding 6 times in the span of one week.
I went to my primary care provider who did a DRE and said they didn’t see/feel anything and that I might have something internal going on, so I was referred to GI. GI also did a DRE and said they didn’t see/feel anything, and put orders in for a colonoscopy AND upper endoscopy given my past visits/complaints from those. I told the doctor that my upper GI symptoms haven’t been bad recently and that I think they may be related to my anxiety as I noticed they get a lot worse when I’m anxious, but they said since I’ll be sedated for the colonoscopy they might as well do an endoscopy too to see if there’s anything wrong. The thing is, I didn’t feel like my symptoms were that bad recently until I noticed the blood, and the only other odd thing is that I normally have diarrhea frequently but I instead seem to be constipated now which is abnormal for me. I also was not feeling any pain/discomfort when I noticed the blood, but since my second DRE I’ve felt slight itchiness, sometimes slight burning in my anus (not when using the bathroom, just randomly throughout the day). So now I’m wondering if I just had a tiny fissure that neither doctor could see (or if the second DRE aggravated whatever’s down there), and if I should cancel my colonoscopy/endoscopy given my symptoms aren’t that bad otherwise at the moment.. I just don’t want to waste so much money for them to tell me I’m fine, especially since previous non-invasive tests (before I started having any bleeding) came back normal.
Has anyone had a similar experience, should I cancel my colonoscopy and endoscopy?