Severe health anxiety/ blood in phlegm

[krisp8261]

Hello all,

This is the first time using this site. I have terrible anxiety and more than ninety percent of the time it's over my health. My health concern now is blood in my phlegm. Yesterday when I cleared my throat I found a blood streak in my phlegm. An hour or so later I picked my nose and found some dry blood. Several minutes after that I got a bloody nose. Throughout the rest of the day I tried coughing to see if blood came up, nothing. Today, again upon waking, I cleared the phlegm out of my throat and there was a dot of blood. Less than yesterday. So I blew my nose and there was dry blood in my boogies. I am worried that the blood in my phlegm from my throat is coming from my lungs and it is a sign I have lung cancer. Logic would say the blood is coming from my nose since there is blood there too. But with anxiety like I have logic is thrown out of the window.
  I already have a flexible sigmoidoscopy scheduled because of small amounts if blood in stool. GP and gastro don't seem concerned. I did three consecutive occult blood tests which came back negative for blood.
  I see my GP weekly because of my anxiety. We were gonna go to two weeks buy I don't know if I'll make because of my phlegm.
I guess I am here for some health anxiety support and find people like me to share stories with. Also if you have insight into my bloody phlegm that will help also (the "get to the dr immediately it's serious" advice won't be that helpful). If you are concerned about the physical symptoms I plan on calling my GP tomorrow morning and if I get really worked up I'll go in.

Thanks in advance

[plomeli]

Do you have allergies, do you sneeze a lot? I had the same problem and it turns out it was a sinus infection. Even the simple act of blowing your nose can break some capillaries. Also if your nose is very dry you can also bleed. In short dont worry it's happened to me and my huband and we are still alive and healthy, I know it's scary but your fine. Take care.

[krisp8261]

Thank you for your reply. I was starting to think nobody was going to comment haha. The weekly visits are quite out of the ordinary. (I am a student and the visits are free. If they weren't going weekly would be quite spendy :D ). I think there are several reasons:
1) He is pretty interested in people with health anxiety who are open to try and work on it. We decided to try regular visits to go over any health concerns and how I am feeling to see if that helps at all. We aren't sure if it is yet.
2) I have had several serious bouts with it recently so I have gone in weekly with physical concerns that I wanted checked out.
3) Several times I was really worked up and they were concerned about my mental stability status (I'm assuming), so they had me come back several days later.

I am on Zoloft 100mg and Hydroxyzine Pamoate. I will try counseling starting next week.

About the blood. Earlier I tried to see if I was coughing the blood, so I coughed several times. Didn't get much sputum but found a very tiny red dot in the sputum which got me worked up. I don't know why I do this to myself. I always seem to have some amount of thick mucous in the back of my throat and nose probably due to allergies. And being August it is pretty hot so I sleep with the ceiling fan on all night. I do sleep with my mouth open.  Logically, considering my age and the fact I don't smoke, you would assume I don't have lung caner. Yet, like I said earlier, when it comes to my health worries there is no logic.

I am looking for people similar to me that I can talk to about anxiety. Do you or have you suffered from any health anxiety?

[RubyWitch]

It sounds like you're doing everything you should be to find the source of the bleeding.
It is extremely unlikely that you have lung cancer. Your age alone pretty much rules that out and blood in phlegm is rarely the first symptom of lung cancer.
I'm sure your upcoming procedure will produce a dx for you.

Why do you see your GP every week for anxiety? I've never heard of anybody doing that before. For your health anxiety I would urge you to get a referral from your GP to a good therapist to get to the root of your anxiety. It would probably be beneficial for you to consider some antianxiety meds, either long or short term.

In my humble and non-medical opinion, I think the problem is either your nose or your sinuses. The blood in your phlegm is probably being swallowed and appearing in your sputum. The amount is insignificant.........with a major disease, you would be producing far more than you are.

I'm very sorry if none of this was helpful.
Greenlydia