People with IBS: check in. (important)

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Hey everyone. As a lot of you know, I suffer from Irritable Bowel Syndrome. a lot of you guys helped me out when the doctors thought it was Crohns back before the Great Straight Dope Message Board crash of '02. I’m still really glad I had you guys there for me when I went through it.

The reason why I am bringing this all up again is due to some curent problems I’ve been having with it. As some of you might remeber, after I had a barium swallow, a CT scan, and a scope, the doctors determined that I only had IBS, but a very bad case. Since it all started, I’ve gone through the pamine and dicyclomine both with no effect. A little while back…before summer, my doctor set me with Bentyl (the little blue pill…no you pervert the OTHER little blue pill) 10mg which I was to take 2 times a day. Well, the day after I got that perscription, I ended up having to go to the ER for a bad attack where they told me to go up to 3 doses a day. I’ve been taking 3 ever since, although towards the end of school I realised I needed to have a little more because I was still having frequent attacks (once a week for an hour long on average)…my doc told me that he thought my attacks were school (thus stress) related. So, he diddnt move up my meds higher…he just told me that if I had a bad time, take 4 a day if I needed to.

Fast forward to mid-summer. I’m STILL having bad attacks. I decided I needed to take 4 in one day (2 pills for one of the doeses…yes its ok to do that too. its only 10 mg)…thats when I first started noticing the side effects…I started to get easally confused, and acutally, that entire week went by to a point that I couldnt remeber hardly anything. In fact…I had realised that ever since I started taking the medicine, everything had kind of blended into nonsence. So I went to my local doc and was told that I was having memory problems due to the meds, so I should fluctuate between 2 and 4 as needed.

Fast forward again to this week. I had to go home on monday due to a bad attack. so like the doc said, I took 2 for my dose that next morning before I went to school. I honestly thought it was just a phase I went through about the memory thing because I diddnt really notice it all that much. So I am walking through the hall with one of my best friends who I’ve known and been good friends with for 5 years now. I’m talking to him…and out of nowhere…who is this person I am talking to? My face goes completely pale…I know he’s familiar…I know I used to hang around him all the time…but who is he? For about 10 seconds there, I litterally forgot who one of my friends was!! you talk about scary. I stoped in my tracks and freaked out. I pretended like everything was ok, and he went along…I remebered and reassured myself who he was and what went on…thats scary though!!

Here is my dilima…my Bentyl is making me flip out first of all. Second of all, I’m having attacks way more than nessisary. In fact I just had an attack not an hour and a half ago, and thats why I’m writing here. My doc said that I’ve gone through all the different IBS medications, and Bentyl is the only one that seems to work…somewhat. I know in higher doses it might work…but if 40mg a day makes me forget who my friend is…what is 80mg going to do? I’m really starting to get worried.

More importantly at this time I’m worried about my attacks…they are getting so horrible that I have to take a Tylonol 4 with Codine every attack I get anymore. I know that heat can help sooth the stomach, but what else is there? Please: if you have IBS can you explain to me your coping mechanisms? Anything will help…Right now the only thing I can do is curl up in a ball and scream…thats all I can do anymore anyways. Its gotten to the point that I wish I would die when I’m having an attack…not that I would EVER even consider suicide…I know its just an attack that will last about an hour…its just one of those “curse the day you were born on” things like Job did. I know it sounds selfish…Its just one of those things where I am in so much agony…pretty much anything would be better. but I repeat too…I would NEVER act upon it. I really need some help…I dont know what to do anymore. Please if you could just give me some idea of how to get past the attacks…thanks everyone.

ThatGuyWithPants

2

Really, really wish I could help you out, but I am going thru the identical thing, ThatGuyWithPants. All I can do is offer tons of empathy. :frowning:

'catz

3

As someone who’s suffered from various digestive problems over the years:

Are you still in posession of your gallbladder? Gallstones can deliver some righteous pain to the abdomen, and apparently a diseased gallbladder/gallstones can mirror symptoms of a whole slew of similar problems.

After, let’s see, 12 years worth of occasional ‘attacks’ diagnosed as everything from IBS to panic attacks, I ended up in the ER a couple years back. Spent 2 days undergoing numerous tests, all to no avail. Another gallbladder attack, which struck all of 10 minutes before I was to be discharged (after the doc scratching his head and telling me, “We don’t know. Just come back if it happens again.”), finally lead the doc to my real problem.

And IANADoctor, but from the label on the little bottle of blue pills I have, Bentyl is dicyclomine hydrochloride. If the dicylomine didn’t work for you, but the bentyl does, you may have a case of placebo at work here. Or simply a different dose working better than last time.

Or, as I said, it may be something else entirely. And unfortunately, having one of these problems does not preclude you also having the other. It’s possible you’re taking the meds for IBS, whilst having a gallbladder attack, so it doesn’t work, then later suffering an actual IBS problem, but you can’t distinguish the two. “My guts hurt” is “my guts hurt” and sometimes you just can’t be more specific.

And yeah, I refer to my dicyclomine pills as stupid pills. From the little reading I’ve done on the subject, the stuff can affect people differently. I’ve had brain-fades where I forget what I was doing a few minutes prior (oh hell, another “senior moment”), but I’ve never forgotten someone’s name, or identity.

In any case, HTH. Good luck with it.

[sub]And isn’t it embarassing to try and explain to someone that you have bad intestines? Always makes me feel like the old SNL sketch about Doug and Wendy Whiner.[/sub]

4

Skeezix you were right about the Dicyclomine/Bentyl mixup. That was mybad. I wrote the thing when I was still under the effects of my T4 w/ Codine…It was Hycosamine that I was thinking of. Pamine, Hycosamine, and Bentyl are the 3. Pamine and Hycosamine do pretty much nothing for me at all.

Considering I am only 17, I cant really blame stuff on senior moments quite yet. What I have been known to do however is have an ongoing joke with my friends…“Its the meds I tell you! the meds!”

I’ll respond later after school about the Galbladder thing. thanks for the replies though. Oh andWildcatz I appreicate the sympathy. feel free to coment on what you are going through.

ThatGuyWithPants

5

Good luck with your issues. Thankfully, I got over it, and haven’t had a serious attack for a very long time. I was prescribed something about 8 years ago, but didn’t take it as I had a newborn and couldn’t deal with being zonked out all of the time. I learned to control it through diet. Has your doctor suggested anything like that?

6

Guy: Considering you are only 17, I’d consider having that gallbladder looked at, going strictly by my own experience. IANAD and YMMV, naturally. I was 18 when mine started up, and lived with an undiagnosed problem on and off for 12 years. When I finally got it yanked, the surgeon told me it was diseased to the point of being necrotic, and could possibly have killed me before too much longer. Talking to my dad, I learned (after the fact, I mean, who the hell thinks about gallbladder problems at 17/18?) that he too developed problems in his teens/early 20s; the Air Force doctor told him his ribs were too long and would give him problems until he had them operated on. Turned out to be a bad gb for him, too.

And what Ginger said, as well. If this is strictly an IBS problem, get thee some fiber, right quicklike.

7

i had problems withibs too and found weight watchers diet helped

8

i had problems withibs too and found weight watchers diet helped

9

Actually, there are two kinds of fiber: soluable and insoluable. I forget which is good or not, but I took the good kind for a good while and it diddnt do squat. My doctor then told me about Equalactin…its a calcium supliment/water regulator (considering I get absolutely no calcium in my diet because I’m lactose intolerant too…go figure) that I take about 6 pills a day of those. They actually work though…that is at keeping everything “regular”. As for keeping me from having stomach pains though, they are pretty much useless.

I would really stop and think about the gallbladder thing more if it wernt for the fact that my dad has IBS horribly too (although not quite as bad as I have it)…only his happen maybe once every 6 months or so, and it usually lasts for about 2 days straight…he’s uncomfortable for a good time, and then he’ll have attacks spread throughout the days. In fact my dad just got into an attack today and has sat around the house in pain all day…however I will keep the gallbladder thing in mind…

What about pain coping though? is there anything you all do to either get your mind off of the pain or possitions to relive some…anything will help. thanks.

10

I hope your doctor is more competent that the one I saw a couple years ago. She took my family history (Dad has Crohns, Mom has Ulcerative Colitis) listened to my symptoms, and sort of concluded " Well these sort of things are hereditary. We’ll investigate further if things get worse." No tests or anything like that.

As it turns out, I discovered this summer that my symptoms have been caused by having developed an intollerance to the lactose in dairy products- which isn’t unusual in young adults come to find out. Cutting out dairy from my diet has virtually eliminated the problems! <shakes head> And here I thought I should be thankful that my problems were mild compared to my parents… Now I’m thankful that my best friend pointed out that people who drink milk their whole lives are still at risk for developing problems with dairy product. :slight_smile:

11

What does an IBS attack feel like? I’ve been periodically having really bad abdominal pains that feel like a cross between menstrual cramps and gas pains, and I can literally feel them tracking through my lower GI tract. These are interspersed with bouts of diarrhea, and I’ve wondered if maybe I have an emerging case of IBS.

12

[TMI alert]An IBS attack (for me, anyway) consists of sudden, severe abdominal cramping and almost explosive diarrhea. Then there are days that I am constipated.

Currently I can NOT go out to eat, because I will have an attack within 5-20 minutes after eating. The cramps get so severe that I am doubled over from the pain, I go pale and become very clammy. Then panic sets in because I am in constant fear that I won’t make it to the restroom on time. [/TMI alert]

In my case, I know it isn’t my gallbladder as I had an emergency cholecystectomy in 11/01 due to a 7.7mm gallstone. Now I just have to suffer through the attacks and hope to deity that this cycle of attacks will be done with soon.

'catz

13

Whoa, I thought I had it bad sometimes. I have a couple bad attacks a week and at least one a day. I have found dairy products and high fiber foods make it worse so I have to limit my intake of those items. Most of the time I can control it with Imodium and when it gets bad, dicyclomine. My doc also felt stress could also be a cause and so I take Paxil too. I also use Beano and Gasex to help with the gas too. I don’t know if I could take anything that affects my memory though, I already had enough bouts of CRS as it is.

14

Excercise. Get up and take a brisk walk. Yeah, when you’re in the middle of a bad bout that’s like telling someone with a compound leg fracture to “walk it off,” but…

Regular excercise works best for me. I got into a habit of walking every night after dinner. Fifteen or twenty minutes. Life was actually fun again. Of course, I got lazy, and stopped, and things were… unfun, for a while. Beyond that, not much else that I’ve found works consistently.

As far as distraction, that one’s hit or miss. Find something that engages you. A game (obviously, you want a reclining chair, or play it standing up), a book, some mental excercise, maybe…
Pick your favorite musician, and replay every note of their earliest album in your head. Don’t skip the choruses. Sometimes one thing’ll work when another doesn’t.

I’d mention that any position involving bending at the middle’s a bad way to go, but I have the feeling I’d be preaching to the converted, yeah?

[sub]As far as gallbladder attacks go, most folks I’ve talked to concur that you really only have one or two bad ones. You almost invariably end up in the ER, yelling some variation on the theme, “This is it, Elizabeth! It’s the big one!”[/sub]

15

I guess I must be made of tougher stuff than that because I suffered almost daily attacks of gallbladder pain for a couple of months before finally dragging myself to the doctor. Not that I recommend doing that. By the time I finally went to the ER, my gallbladder was so infected and swollen that it was almost bursting. But I can relate to the pain. I’ve given birth to four babies with no pain killers and had less pain than I did with the gallbladder attacks.

Now, about the IBS. One of my friends has been diagnosed with this and has found that a high fiber diet and exercise has worked better for her symptoms than any pills her doctor ever gave her.

16

From someone who has just had her gallbladder removed:

Have you ever had a stabbing pain in your abdomen, just below your ribcage and to the right? This is where your gallbladder is. If you have pain here, it doesn’t mean that you necessarily have gallbladder problems, but it is something you need to point out to your doctor. Also, can you look tell if your attacks are related to high fat intake? If the last one came right after an exceptionally fatty meal, this is something else you need to tell your doctor. Also, controlling your fat intake may help reduce your problems until you can get medical help.

Gallbladder attacks come in many forms. I never had the “I think I’m having a heart attack” pain, but I had a lot of problems with nausea, diarrhea, and abdominal pain. But it was feeling like I was being stabbed in that spot I mentioned that led to my successful diagnosis.

17

Start TMI now.
Well I know it can vary from person to person…For those of you who dont know the physical reasoning for IBS is this. [teachermode] Everybody has a natural flow of muscle contractions in their digestive tract, aaaaallll the way down. These rhytmic contractions are called parastalisis (sp). For people who have IBS, the muscle contractions are out of wack, and end up contracting at odd times, and in odd locations in the large (and actually I’ve heard sometimes the small) intestine. These contractions can be more or less severe depending on the case of the IBS. Sometimes, these contractions are placed right behind or around your…um…waste. When this happens, the result is diarrhea because the contractions speed up the waste faster than it should be, and because it stays for a shorter time in the large intestine, the waste has much more liquid than it should.
Just as comon as diarrhea IBS patients, there is constipation IBS patients. This is pretty much the opposite as above, where instead of the contraction behind the waste, it contracts before the waste. The result is an extremely painful case where the IBS is going crazy because there is still stuff in your intestine. See, IBS attacks are triggered mostly by the foods that you eat, but stress plays a huge roll in it too. For example, I cant drink any type of fruit juice because my IBS is a trigger. Now I bet some other people in here could guzzle OJ, but they might not be able to drink any coffee. I on the other hand (THANK GOODNESS) can down 15 coffees and still not have any stomach pains. Trigger foods (as they are called) vary person to person.

There are really only 2 other cases of IBS that I know of. That would be the rotation IBS and the pain IBS. What i mean by rotation is a “flip flop” where you have diarrhea for maybe a week, and then constipated for a week, and it rotates between the two constantly. the last one is with pain, which is the one that I have. I still tend to drift to the diarrhea side, but for the most part, all I have is extreme amounts of pain, but its relieved when I go to the bathroom. Mind you all cases have pain involved, but for some reason some just have a hightened pain with it.
End TMI now

What does it feel like? Well it can really vary person to person you see. The pain can really be in different locations for each person. For me, its pretty much all over, but it tends to be right in the middle-lower part of my gut, right around and above the belt line specificly, while the rest still hurts pretty baddly. I’m not a girl so I cant exactly say if it feels like menstral pains or not. Suffice to say, I’ve broken my arm, and sprained my ankle before, and neither compare to the pain. The closest thing I can think of that feels like the same pain (but still not quite as bad by comparison), was when I was stung by a hornet in the ear. Course with hornets, the pain comes in waves…take the peak wave when it first happens, and make it constant…that was about the same way I could describe it.

Let me ask you, are your attacks pretty soon after you eat? Because if its a trigger food, you can have an attack in a matter of 5 to 10 minutes. (I never did quite understand that. its not like the food or drink is up against the colon yet…) If its becoming a lot more frequent, I recomend you go to the doctor to get it checked out…Heck, do it anyway. Getting some medicine will make you feel better. In the mean time, avoid the obvious things…dont eat any hot foods, dairy products beyond cheese (cheese has no lactose, and lactose is a nightmare for a lot of IBS patients), anything with caffene, and any carbonated beverages. Some of those might be fine with you…I mean like I said above, Caffenes doesnt do anything to me. Oh, and probobly the most obvious thing to avoid is alcohol. That stuff is HORRIBLE on your system according to the doctors. whenever you eat, its really recomended that you eat slowly, and break down your meals into smaller, more frequent ones.

Oh, and go pick up some Equalactin. Its over the counter, and its not bad for your system even if you dont have IBS. It keeps you normal, plus you get some calcium which is good for your bones, and it also helps calm the colon. Peppermint is really good for the colon too.

I hope I helped atleast a little bit. Good luck, and I pray its only a bug you have.

18

I had an emergency galbladder removal three years ago. I developed complications and the gastro diagnosed IBS and put me on Bentyl. That stuff made me crazy! I would pass out and black out, but I was still having severe attacks.

I ended up in the ER this past January with a very severe attack. The gastro on duty (and now my new doctor - I love him) diagnosed severe IBS and GERD. He said Bentyl is an outdated treatment and side effects are common with that medication. He put me on the anti-spasmodic Levbid and a very low fat diet (around 10 to 15 grams per day). I have no side effects with the new medication and no more attacks! This is the first time I have been pain free in nearly 10 years. I am just now getting used to not worrying about an IBS attack and the horrible pain that comes with it. I feel great!

ThatGuyWithPants, talk to your doctor and if he won’t listen, find a new one. There are other options for this condition and you are not doomed to a life of pain and stress. Feel free to contact me if you need support. I have been through the worst of the worst with IBS.

Best wishes for you.

Poodle

19

I’ve got it too. For some reason, it calmed down during pregnancy, but I can’t be pregnant all the time, so that’s out.

My old GYN told me to have two Metamucil wafers every day. I did that for a while several years ago, and it seemed to help. So did eating more vegetables and fruits (which may be why it went away when I was pregnant). If you smoke, you may want to stop; that seems to make it worse.

Over the past week or so, I’ve had an attack, but that’s attributable to stress and the fact that I started smoking again. :frowning:

Robin

20

ThatGuyWithPants sorry your not doing well mate.

I’ve got Crohns and I’ve found when the pain gets really bad I focus on my breathing. Really seems to help for me, I always try to keep busy even if it’s doing something mundane, as long as my mind is focusing on something else.

Sending good thoughts and prayers your way.