Hey Mate
These days you can visit any of these suburban 'GP factories', you just need to take control, sit down with a new doctor (or push your existing one) and say you want to have a colonoscopy and need them to provide a referral. Then you go and get the test done.
Blood in the poo - well, it can be cancer, sure. It can also be tears in the rectum from constipation - so if you've ever suffered constipation and strained to poo, don't immediately start thinking BIG C. Until you know what it is, you don't know what it is .. second guessing isn't helpful. Be diligent and aggressive in getting it investigated.
I had a tear down there (as a result of constipation from chemo medicine), and I would bleed consistently, gushes of blood, into the toilet - every time, for months. It's a bit slow healing, and if a tear is serious, you can re-open it pretty easily.
Lastly - let's say it's some kind of bowel cancer - as I understand it, this profile of cancer is one of the more successfully treatable, and also slow-acting. There are other forms of cancer that can kill you rapidly - a woman can be diagnosed with breast cancer and be dead 2 weeks later, some cancer types are just more volatile and unpredictable than others, I guess .. but bowel cancer (at least by reputation for a layman) is supposed to be one of the better kinds to get (if you have to get cancer).
But you don't know what it is .. until you know. Push for a colonoscopy, I think for rectal bleeding that's the "go-to" diagnostic procedure.
