Scared that Dad might have colon cancer

Hello beautiful people,

I hope this is the right place to post this. My 78 year old father started having bleeding when going to poop about 3 years ago. He says that it appears on the toilet paper when he wipes. He also had a couple of episodes where a lot of blood appeared in the toilet bowl.

As soon as this happened the first time (3 years ago) he went to the GP and he was put on a waiting list to see a Dr to have a colonoscopy. It took up until now just to get an appointment. The Dr said they are going to do a colonoscopy to see what's causing the bleeding but it's going to be at least another 6 weeks before they get back to him with an appointment.

He doesn't have any pain at all, he does get diarrhea from time to time when he eats something that doesn't agree with him but other than that he's fine. He said the color of the blood is bright red. He also said he can sometimes bleed for several days and then it can go away for a month or two at a time and then come back again.

I've only now just started Googling symptoms and colon cancer is the first thing that comes up when typing in blood when pooping. I'm really scared if he has cancer that it might be too late to save him as the waiting lists here to get an appointment are crazy. We were told he is lucky he got in in 3 years, some people are waiting 7 years to be seen!

Please are you able to share with me your symptoms before you were diagnosed and what can I do to support my Dad through this?

Thank you so much