Your doctor has heard it all before so please don’t die of embarrassment

We understand that for many people, it can be difficult talking about bodily functions, knowing what words to use or even describing symptoms, but we promise you, medical professionals do not blush easily. It might help if you think about symptoms as just another sort of information, nothing more or less, and that your medical team needs this information to help make a diagnosis, and make you better.

What’s taboo to you is all in a day’s work to them.

Use your own words

There’s no need to apologise for not knowing medical terms for bits of the body, it’s perfectly acceptable to use words or expressions that you do know.

‘I am not pooing properly’ is every bit as acceptable as ‘I have noticed some changes with my bowel movements’.

‘I am experiencing rectal discomfort’ is no better or worse than ‘my back passage hurts’.
All that matters is that you describe what you’re feeling in a way that is understandable, and leave the medical professionals to do the translation into Latin or Greek.

Use the test kit

And while we are on the subject of open and honest conversations, let’s look at another common misconception. Many of you will have received a bowel cancer screening test in the post, and many of you will have ignored it, put it in a drawer for ‘later’, or pulled a funny face, said ‘eewww’ and thrown it away.

Do be aware that the kits have a ‘use by’ date, so if you are one of the ‘leave if for later’ crowd, please note that you might be sent another kit if you leave it too late to send yours back.
Using the screening kit could not be easier, so forget all the stories that you may have heard (and over the years we have heard some very strange ones) and take a look at this short video. It tells you all about the FIT (Faecal Immunochemical Test), and gives step-by-step instructions that are really easy to follow.

The return postage is even paid for you, and if you are over the age of 50 and registered with a GP, you will be sent a testing kit every two years, please don’t ignore it.

It might not be the way that you envisaged starting your day but then again, it’s just a simple test that you do in the privacy of your own bathroom and it could save your life.

That seems like a really straightforward choice to us.

And remember, in the unlikely event that the FIT test detects blood in your poo, you will receive an invitation to a screening clinic to discuss your results and decide whether further tests are necessary.