Irritable Bowel Syndrome Message Boards

I don't know enough about parasites to answer your questions definitively, but I think parasites could make you sick for a year and I don't think there's necessarily any sign of them. You can do a Search on the Diet Board for "parasite" with no time limit and you'll get a lot of hits, including some from people who actually had the little suckers and one that mentions the Smoky whatever lab. There's also a post that talks about a 6-7 days explosive D pattern sometimes being indicative of giardia (I think it was).

I'm beginning to think I'm making you feel worse rather than better and that's not what I intended. It's just that if I had intransigent IBS-D that didn't respond to Heather's approach, I'd be turning over every rock I could find to see what else could be going on.

As for Elavil, I didn't do the depressed and neurotic part, but the "Elavil sweet tooth" is a classic I definitely participated in. As for falling asleep, oh, yeah. I started taking Elavil on Thursday. On Saturday a friend came to stay with us for a week's visit. On Monday, we were going to Kykuit (the Rockefeller estate). We all got dressed and had breakfast and I went upstairs to put on my earrings. I sat down on the bed for just a minute and half an hour later my husband was waking me up - he's come up to see what happened because I just disappeared.

The falling asleep at a moment's notice disappeared after a week or two, but I continued to crave 9, 10, 11, sometimes 24 hours of sleep a night. Because the help from Elavil wore off after a few weeks, my doctor kept pumping the dosage: 10mg, worked for a few weeks, stopped; 25 mg, worked for a few weeks, stopped; and so on. I got up to 75, I think. At that point I still wasn't depressed, but I was totally apathetic. I really couldn't think of any good reason to get out of bed in the morning - not sad, just utterly disinterested. After a month of two of that, I found Heather's diet, went on it, and went off the Elavil.

Long story, but the point of it is that for me Elavil wasn't a long-term solution - it didn't work for more than a few weeks at each dosage and the ultimate side effects were unendurable. It did, however, give me a few little breaks in the then constant D and that was psychologically very helpful. (Read: it kept me from throwing myself under a speeding tractor-trailer.) However, I wasn't working, so if I wanted to nap at 10:30 in the morning or sleep for 14 hours, I could.

One last thought and I feel kind of stupid even suggesting this, but you might try posting what you're eating. I can't imagine there's anything in your diet that's causing problems, but it's sort of the last thing I can think of.

Take care.

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[Research tells us fourteen out of any ten individuals likes chocolate. - Sandra Boynton]

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