Irritable Bowel Syndrome Message Boards | Hi, im a newbie and I dont know if I belong here!!!!

Hi. First of all a bit of background on myself. I am a 35 year old male and have been relatively healthy since birth. Dont smoke, dont drink, do sports, eat healthy etc.
About a year and a half ago, after a very stressfull event in my life, I was prescribed xanax to calm me down. I took up to 1mg daily for about a month and a half. My Doc then switched me to the XR version which I took for another 2 and a half months (so I was on Xanax for a total of 4 months). Around the third month, I started experiencing horrible symptoms such as terrible upper back pains, muscle twitches and insomnia. For sleep, my doc prescribed ambian so you can imagine what the combination of Xanax and ambian did to me. When I realized that these drugs were killing me, I panicked and went cold turkey. The withdrawal symptoms made me feel like I was in hell.
Around november 2003, before I started cutting Xanax, I developed a type of more or less constant pain around the upper right abdominal region where the gall bladder resides. This came with other gastrointestinal problems such as flatulance, nausea and very loose stools.
Offcourse, I panicked again and had the doctor do a batch of tests.
These included complete blood works, urinalysis, stool sample test, several abdominal ultrasounds and an abdominal MRI and MRCP, further blood works. All this over the span of a year during which my pain did not subside!
Everything came back normal with the exception of my ALT liver enzymes that are constantly slightly above the normal range. Although I am not considered obese, I am slightly overweight and it has been suggested to me that I have a bit of a fatty liver.
In all I went to see 2 generalists and 4 gastroenterologists. The last gastro I saw is a world renown professor at the univesity hospital here in Geneva, Switzerland. He is a liver specialist and has published more than 180 articles in various publications. He saw me twice and he believes that I am suffering from IBS. He basically told me that I need to change my diet and learn to relax. He also suggested that I take 25mg of zoloft a day as an alternative!
Now thats what prompted me to purchase your book on the first year with IBS. When I started to read the introduction, I became very anxious after reading the email of that lady who had IBS symptoms which turned out to be a benign polyp.
I am really at a loss because my symptoms dont seem to fit the IBS criteria, at least not with regards to the pain part. The definition clearly states that the pain is in the lower abdominal region. My pain is only on one area and that is the upper right. Then there is the fact that IBS affects women more then men and its relatively rare for it to start after the age of 30!!! I am still not convinced that I have IBS and I dont want to have to go through a colonoscopy procedure after all that I have endured. By the way I have had a rectal exam and a sigmoidocopy performed about 2 years ago and I was all clear.
What do you think? Its now almost a year and a half since these symptoms emerged and its been relatively constant ever since. Should I still be searching for whats wrong with me after all of this? I am really scared that I might have something horrible like cancer or some chronic liver disease and I am at a loss. For the first time in my life, I dont know what to do!

Edited by ottoman (04/19/05 08:56 AM)

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