Irritable Bowel Syndrome Message Boards | Need to vent...looking for help, support, whatever

Long post, so be warned; and it's a bit more detailed than you might want to know.

Ok, here's how my day went:

Morning. Breakfast was some Honey Nut Cheerios and Rice Chex. Went to 9:00 a.m. class, had BM, not the greatest, but not horrific. As an IBS-C, I measure things by length of time; the longer it is, the worse I feel.

Got back to my dorm a little after 10:30, and saw I had a message from the University of Pennsylvania Health Referral System. Since I'm a Baltimoron, my primary GI specialist is in Baltimore, not here in Philly. So not only do I want a local doctor, but I'm actually looking for a second opinion since there was almost no workup in my case.

Anyway, so I call back and get bounced around a bit because I'm not in the Hospital at the University of Pennylania (HUP) system; only the school's Student Health System. After finding that there's a IBS program only a few blocks away from my dorm (for the Philadelphians, it's on 39th and Market, Presbyterian Hospital) and getting all my info in, I get an appointment....for March. Argh.

After all this time, I make it to lunch. I eat, fairly quickly, some potatoes and three vegetarian meatballs along with some oatmeal cookies. Quick trip to the bathroom, easy BM. Run to 12:00 class, make it until 1:20, then dash for the bathroom. Rather long and painful BM, then off to 2:00 class. Before the class even starts, I'm back in the bathroom. It starts OK, but then becomes thin BMs that are hard to push out. Towards the end, I notice I'm bleeding a bit, but that's not too unusual for C. When I leave, I notice according to the clock that I was in there for a little over 20 minutes, which is bordering on not good.

Back in class, and as soon as the class ends at 2:50, I'm back in the bathroom, where a BM (for lack of better word) explodes. Then off to 3:00 class. Things went OK until dinner. At dinner, I eat some chicken, white rice, polenta, and chicken rice soup with a lot of water and some oatmeal cookies (with a few raisins in the cookies). Start having LOTS of gas, go to the bathroom, BM. Some blood again. Hurts a bit to get out.

Gas progresses through the evening, make it back to my dorm room at 7:15, in the bathroom, quite painful now, small BM, still some blood post-BM. Took my SFS (Metamucil). Been snacking on some orzo during the evening. Just went to the bathroom AGAIN and had an EXTREMELY painful BM with thin BMs and maybe even a bit of blood in the BM, but I think it could be tomato pieces also.

I have a test tomorrow, and I can't deal with this and the test at the same time. Did I do something wrong? Is there another medical issue here I can't see?

Thanks for reading through this.

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Why'd you have to go and make me so constipated?
--'Weird' Al Yankovic, "A Complicated Song"

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