Irritable Bowel Syndrome Message Boards

Ever wonder if IBS is what you really have OR how the hell did it even start? As I think back to when things started to change, I find that I can better assess what may've happened. This is my story (long and graphic):

I was always a sick little girl (vertigo, motion sickness--both related) and I never got excited about going anywhere because I knew I was going to get sick so as soon as I was told, "Wendy, we're going to such and such place next week", immediately, I would start to get queasy and inevitably on the day of, I would get sick. Then I would never enjoy where we were because I knew that going back home was going to be the same thing. I missed out on school trips and swinging on swings and seesaws, etc. As the years progressed and now as an adult, I still get motion sick, but I'm able to better mentally fight not the feeling of getting queasy, but the thoughts that eventually lead me to getting queasy. I'm a pool player and I used to travel a lot to go to different tournaments, and every now and then for no reason at all, whether I'd be on a plane, on a train, or at my destination, the thought, "what if you get sick and you're so far from home" would pop into my mind. It was very strange and completely out of left field, and I would mentally brush it off. One time the thought stayed for a bit on my way to Pennsylvania on Amtrak and I started feeling weird. But I brushed that one off too.

In April of 1996, I was diagnosed with Meniere's Disease and that's a whole other ball game in and of itself. The triggers for Meneire's are ridiculously sensitive. What I see, smell, taste, and even hear can send me to the pits of lightheadedness and nausea. I was on medication (1 pill a day of Hystamine Phosphate, I think) and I was getting an injection once a month (I don't remember what it was). Eventually, I didn't need the meds anymore 'cause like with everything else, I was at the mild end of Meniere's disease. That's not to say that every now and then I go one way and the world goes another.

By April of 2006, I noticed that the thought would pop into my head more often. Actually, it wasn't even the thought anymore, it's the feeling that the thought created that would build up. I went through this during the summer of '87 before starting high school and by summer's end, I was normal. So when this started happening again in April last year, I figured it would go away on it's own just as it did in '87. Boy was I wrong. By June of 2006, I noticed a change in my BMs. I was going everyday (the norm for me used to be every other day or two), and it was loosey goosey or soft formed. At the time, I was eating the foods from the Nutrisystem diet which is very saucy (this probably explains how I got the irritations in my stomach lining from too much acidic foods). I figured the Nutrisystem foods was making my stool the way it was and since I was trying to lose weight, going everyday didn't seem like a problem. Eventually, I got tired of the foods and went back to cooking. Meanwhile, the weird BMs were still going on and the feeling of being sick while I'm not home mildly intensified. I was still eating normally. One night in August 2006, I had been experiencing super mild non-menstrual cramps. I was intimate with someone that night and the cramps got worse. I've never given birth but it felt as if I was going to have something come out of either the front or back end. I was doubled over. I finally got home, took some Advil and went to sleep. The next morning I could still feel the soreness of the cramps from the night before.

This is when things took a turn for the worse. On December 13, 2006, I came into work and was having my breakfast when out of nowhere, I got super queasy and got D. I went several times while at work and finally decided to call it a day at about 11 AM. I have a 20 minute subway ride home but on that day, it took me 2 hours. I didn't want to get D while on the subway and I didn't want to barf and I knew that if I did, D would come out too. It was my worst "what if you get sick and you're so far from home" nightmare. I wound up getting off 2 stops later and walking to my friend's job to use the bathroom. He then accompanied me the rest of the way home on the subway (7 stops, 10 minutes). By the time we got to my stop, all feelings of being sick became nonexistant. Could it be that my mind was exacerbating the way I was feeling? Because of the incident on that day, my anxiety--and yes I can definitely say it was anxiety--worsened. Whenever I would feel queasy or felt like I might have a BM, immediately my thoughts would go back to December 13 and then I'd start getting internally panicky 'cause I'd worried about how I was going to get home. I guess that day was kind of traumatizing for me. In January of 2007, I knew I was going to cancel all of my pool tournament trips because I was scared to be far from home and the last thing I needed was a repeat of December 13. The BMs were still loosey goosey and I decided to make an appointment with my regular doc who then recommended me to the GI doc that performed my colonoscopy. Meanwhile, I'm still eating normally yet I was in fear of getting that feeling of possibly losing control in areas where I won't be able to escape or where I wouldn't have any help available. To this day, I still get scared of being trapped on the subway and I can't get out. In NYC, that's always a possibility as trains malfunction or someone gets sick, etc. (I'm working on fighting that feeling by listening to the self hypnosis CDs and by reading up on Anxiety and Phobia books. By the way, in reading these books and answering the workbook questions, my anxiety seems to be agoraphobia).

<Graphic>
February 2, 2007, I was scheduled for a colonoscopy. It was a bad experience. Everyone told me that the worst of it would be the prep work the night before. Not! I woke up in the middle of my colonoscopy 'cause my body was telling me that I was about to hurl. I looked at the nurse--who was surprised to see me looking at her--and I said that I needed to throw up. She got a wastebasket for me and it was mostly dry heaving or bile since I had nothing in my stomach. Then I felt the pain of things moving around in my stomach and my natural reaction was to stop the pain and so I reached behind me and grabbed the GI's arm. The nurse injected more of the anesthesia which only made me sicker and so I was in and out of it, all the while feeling that hose thing dancing around my insides. It was a feeling of cramps x10. Finally it was over and I wound up staying in the recoop room for a couple of hours because I kept hurling. They finally injected me with something that they give cancer patients and within 15 minutes, it was as if I'd never felt nauseus! The GI then told me that everything was fine and that the only thing he found was an insignificant teeny hemorrhoid that I'd probably given myself by making myself go. That was on a Thursday. I then had my first BM that following Monday and I felt relief, it was hunky, and it was my normal! The only thing was that there were 2 chunks of black which the GI later said was probably old blood and that it could be coming from my upper GI tract and that I should have an endoscopy. After the experience with the conoscopy, I didn't want anymore scopys of anything! He never could tell me why before the colonoscopy my BMs had changed but said that perhaps the prep work from the night before the colonscopy cleared out anything I may've been having. Meanwhile, I continued eating normally, going out for drinks and dinner, the anxiety still there and continually growing. Two days after that normal BM, I had D and in the D, there was a chunk of black again. I told my GI and he told me that if it happens again, I should submit a stool sample. It never happened again. I also told him that since the colonoscopy, I noticed that I'd become lactose intolerant. He said that a colonsocopy doesn't make a person lactose intolerant and left it at that.

March 2007 thru the early part of June 2007, the symptoms I had before the colonsocopy came back. My anxiety had worsened because I was afraid to feel sick. I remember being at lunch in Chinatown with my coworker and all of a sudden, in the middle of eating my lunch, I felt like D was coming on. We had to rush back to work. I was so confused and decided to bite the bullet and make an appointment for an endoscopy with the same GI doc. (This part is interesting) I go to the doctor's office and tell the attendants that I have an appointment with Dr. X. They give me a funny look and say, "He doesnt' work here anymore." I returned the puzzled look and said, "But I just made the appointment on Friday!" They then tell me to see my regular doctor who's in the same office. I told him what my issues were and I asked, "Where the hell is Dr. X?" and my doc made a face, brushed it off and said, "He's not here anymore." I said, "Well, I see there's no love lost there, huh?" He didn't tell me what happened and I wish I knew. He then recommended my current GI doc whom I love. I made an appointment with Dr. Bryne (my new GI doc) and he listened to every last bit of what I was feeling. At this point, in addition to the BMs and anxiety, I was feeling a dull ache in my upper chest and sometimes in the middle of a meal, all of a sudden I thought I was going to hurl. An endoscopy by him showed the irritations in my stomach lining which was producing acid reflux. That was all and he said that the acid reflux is enough to make someone hurl while eating. He put me on 30 days worth of Omeprazol and I had to avoid all things acidic and spicy or if I had to eat something in those categories, I'd have to pop a couple of TUMs. Meanwhile, I still kept eating normally. By the end of June, my BMs were still wishywashy and he had me take some blood work to see if I had any infections, lactose intolerance, thyroid--everything showed up normal and good. A sonogram of my organs were in fine shape too (I was hoping that there was something wrong with my gall bladder but alas, no such luck). He then told me that all of my symptoms point to IBS and gave me a "You are not alone" pamphlet and he pointed me to this website. Meanwhile, my only symptoms were the weird BMs, the anxiety that had been slowly creeping up on me, and the newly not being able to tolerate milk or ice cream that developed after the colonoscopy.

So I go on this website, read through everything, and it looked like I mostly fell into the anxiety category of the testimonials of the Hypnosis CDs. The only thing I've had trouble with so far is Atlantic Salmon but I swear that if I were to eat steak or anything else other than ice cream or milk, I'm fine. I'm just too scared to try it out and when I do, it'll probably be some time in December when I have tons of days off for the holidays. I've been following the diet, the acacia, and the recipes, and I can't say that I'm worse but I can definitely say that I'm at the same place I was before the colonoscopy--as far as the BMs go. I think it's mostly due to the anxiety and what it's making my tummy do.

<Graphic and strictly for the ladies so read at your own risk otherwise>
Meanwhile, I still have some more probing to do and that's with my GYN. I was diagnosed with HPV (Human Papiloma Virus) back in January of 2003 and instead of going for my yearly pap smear, I have to go twice a year to get special pap smears. The virus for my HPV is dormant (there is the cancerous kind and there is the one that gives you genital warts--I got the latter). I've never gotten warts thank God. Anyway, like I said, the virus is currently dormant and they may always be dormant. I'm no longer intimate with anyone because 1. I'm not into anyone and I don't just sleep around and 2. Sex hurts for me afterwards.

Because HPV is and can be cancerous, I want to make sure that my symptoms are strictly IBS, if that's what I have because I just know that I can eat whatever and not get sick but I'll have to test that out come December. There are four things that I've been experiencing and I don't know if they were always there or because now I'm so alert that I'm paying attention to everything. These are all worth mentioning to my GYN:

1. I've never been the kind of girl that gets bloated or cramps during that time of month so I don't have anything to compare it to if I do get bloated. Anyway, I'm a tampon user and I noticed something with my last 2 periods. When I insert the applicator up to the point before inserting the actual tampon, I feel like there's something inside blocking the applicator. In other words, I have to jiggle it around before I can find a spot, something I've never had to do. When I let go of the applicator, it pops back out on its own as if there's no room for anything else. I wind up jiggling it again and finally inserting the tampon. Is it because I'm bloated? My belly doesn't pop out so I truly don't know if I'm bloated or not.

2. I don't feel like I'm emptying my bladder when I urinate. Have you ever urinated and squeezed your muscles while going so that no one can hear you urinating? Well, that's what it feels like. I feel the urine coming out but it's not giving me the relief one gets after urinating. Most of the times, after I urinate, I have to go again within 10 minutes and the feeling feels as if I'd been holding it in for hours.

3. I've never been a heavy bleeder. I'm a 6 day kind of girl. On days 1-3 and the first half of day 4, I wear a tampon. By the second half of day 4 and through day 6, I wear panty liners. I now noticed that on days 7-9, after I urinate and wipe, I notice a very slight hue of pink. Not enough for me to wear protection but it's there on the TP. I don't have symptoms that accompany a person when kidney stones are present but I'll make sure to tell my GYN this too.

4. The last thing are the cramps from hell. Why in God's name am I having excruciating cramps in my pelvic area after sex (when I used to have it that is)? I've had the same mild cramps too but never anything like what I experienced in August of last year.

I have an appointment with my GYN next Monday. Sigh.

Congratulations! If you're reading this at this point, that means that you read through my mumbo jumbo and I truly appreciate you "lending me your ear". One last thing:

*Should I find out what happened to that first GI doc?
*Could the jarring that I felt in my tummy during my colonoscopy been the cause of any IBS symptons (if I actually have IBS)?
*If so, do I have a lawsuit in my hands?
*If my GYN visit goes well, is it time for me to go to a Urologist?

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Wendy IBS A thru Z
Taking it one day at a time...

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