Irritable Bowel Syndrome Message Boards | Re: New Job, New Day.. Need to get stable

Hey Steph,

Congrats on the new job. It sounds as if it'll be really fun. I too am not a fan of public transit. I used to take the subway to highschool everyday, but now I hat ethe thought of a long drive to work and am really happy I don't have one.

The first piece of advice I have, and you may have done it already, is before you start, travel the route a couple times so you can see what to expect on a day where you're not in a hurry. Take some time and figure out where different emergency washrooms would be on the way. That way if you are having a really bad day one morning you know ok, I just have to make it another 10 minutes to this stop as opposed to 'oh crap' it'll be another 45 minutes til I get to work. One other thing, especially for the first week, give yourself lots of extra time, that way if you do feel you've got to take a pit stop, you're not putting more pressure on yourself.

Mornings suck for me too. I have gotten relatively stable, although getting paged to go on a flight in the middle of the night like last night doesn't help, but that's another story.

The things that I have found that help me the most on the mornings are:
1- being really careful about what I ate including making sure I have my fiber
2- getting AT LEAST 8 hours of sleep. that means going to bed pretty earlier some nights even thought my roommates are up watching a movie (I wear earplugs if I have to)
3- Giving myself extra time in the morning. If I have an early morning, I will try and get up 1 and a half to 2 hours before I have to leave for work. Sometimes that means I'm up at 5am or earlier, however, it helps give my stomach time to do its thing.
4- Then, last resort, if it's one of those mornings that things just are not sitting right I'll take an Immodium or two to get me through.

With regards to the anti-depressants, that's a tough call. Although I know you love your boyfriend and I'm sure he has your best interests at heart, don't not take them simply because he doesn't want you to. The girl I dated in highschool had really bad depression, and even though I think I did a pretty good job helping her and dealing with it, I really didn't understand the pain that she was going through.

On side note, and I'm sure I'm starting to sound like BEv

(which isn't a bad thing) have you tried the hypnotherapy? I'm about half way through and although I don't find that it will suddenly stop the D, I do find that overall I'm less stressed out about things. You seem to have a lot of stress on your plate right now and it may help you to calm down. One other thing, and I know it's super tough to do. If you don't find you're feeling a whole lot better. Take some time, like a month or two, for yourself. It helped me a lot.

Good Luck,
Jamie

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