I’m frightened again

This morning when I went to the toilet, I had semi-liquid blood mixed with my stool.

There wasn’t a lot of it, and things otherwise looked normal (no diarrhea—blood is a laxative, I later found out), and the blood was dark (probably not extremely recent, or if it is it’s venous blood and not arterial), but . . . internal bleeding is scary.  It was scary enough to send me to an emergency visit to my doctor this morning (I got the appointment on an hour and a half’s notice).  He listened to my gut, did a rectal exam, and told me that he found no residual pooled blood in the rectal area, nor did he see any in the bits of stool on his glove after the exam.  He said a common cause of these is an internal hemorrhoid breaking open, but he still wants to send me to see a colo-rectal specialist for a colonoscopy, to rule out diverticulitis (possible; I have a family history of it) or anything else.  He sent me away with the referral and instructions that if more bleeding occurred over the weekend, I was to take myself to the ER and let them sort it out.

And that’s what I have to live with for a while.