# My story



## ary (Aug 24, 2015)

Middle school is a tough time by itself and even tougher when you have a love for carne aside fries and brownies but your stomach doesn't share that love. In the 6th grade i started to get terrible stomach pains and diahrea my mom told me it was only food poisoning and that it would be gone by Tuesday, I'm still waiting for that mom, low and behold it wasn't and i was taken to more doctors appointments than I could count and with every doctor appointment that went unanswered I thought I was going crazy and just imagining. When I was finally referred to a gastro doctor i was able to get more specialized test but the problem was me being a minor there are very few gastro doctors open to my disposal and lots of kids needing to see a gastro doctor so it would take me 3 to 6 months to see in a doctor in the mean time I went through many phases of dealing with this thing that made me just want to separate from my body 90% of the time I finally accepted that something was wrong in my stomach and i just adapted my life around it and eventually it became norma and i forgot what it was like to be able to eat what i want and not view food as evil and be able to go to sleep around a reasonable time and not be awoken in the middle of the night with indescribable stomach pains and the urgent need to go to the bathroom. Two years later and what felt like hundreds of test i was diagnosed with a bacterial overgrowth in my small intestine and IBS. That was both an amazing time and a time where i realized that i would never quite be just right. The Bacterial overgrowth was treatable with medication that kills the bacteria in your small intestine it was so hard for me because at that point i was given so many medications at that point that my doctor said would help stop the pain and none of them did and finally i was given a diagnosis and medication that they were 100% sure would stop the pain. After that i was finally able to eat a little bit more and gain some of the weight that i had lost i was in the 8th grade and i rarely had what i called "episodes" it was great I was finally able to be normal. In high school it started coming back and we thought it was the bacterial overgrowth but it wasn't my IBS had just gotten really bad resulting in me getting sick almost every single morning and every night which resulted in me missing a lot of school so we went back to my gastro doctor only to be faced with a doctor who was unsupportive and believed IBS to be all a mental thing so he sent me to a hypnotist. Believe it or not hypnosis, which was staring at a marble for 45 minutes, did nothing to help treat my IBS but make me realize maybe i shouldn't go to the doctor anymore. Missing so much school made my grades go down the toilet, see what i did there, and me even more urgent to find something that worked with my ibs but what i found was an uncooperative doctor who said I was too sensitive to the subject and was imagining it. We tried switching doctor but sadly he was the only doctor available so from then on i vowed never to see him again no matter how bad it got because having to back and see him was more painful than the IBS. Throughout High school my is continued having its phases id have good weeks and bad weeks but what was starting to develop through my junior and senior year where panic attacks and I would get really bad anxiety whenever i would have to leave the house i never told anyone about the anxiety or the IBS, i had one friend she was amazing and i was able to tell her about my IBS so i was only really comfortable to hang out with her or i mean as comfortable as you could be with anyone when you have such urgent and frequent bowel needs. My Senior year i was referred to a therapist at first i was totally against it i mean i thought therapy was for crazy people but it actually helped a lot i had an amazing therapist who helped me with relaxation techniques and someone just to cry with when i was having a bad patch. I missed a lot of school but I was able to graduate high school and i am now a college freshman although i am still 17 so i still can't see another doctor for three more weeks then i turn 18!!!! i think one of the worse things about IBS is that well one it's chronic, to some seen as a mental issue and that we can't really control it, and most of all i think this is a problem that most of us have on here is that it's embarrassing and thats why we feel so alone because we can't just bring it up in conversation and maybe relate to close friend that might have it but instead we keep it a secret hidden from others and just left to eat at us. Im sorry that this didn't offer any advice i just felt the need to write it out this is the first time I've ever told my story and I'm just happy to be able to find other people who are dealing with the same thing it's nice not to be alone


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