# Both Sides and Middle Back Pains?



## Matt b (Feb 27, 2011)

I have had pains in my side on and off for the past 6 months or so. It seemed to all start when my constipation got to an extreme point in December. Although when the constipation started I would never feel any pain from it at all. My whole life I have never been regular and never really cared. I could go five days without a bm and not notice. No pain what so ever. Only now the stools are very hard and I never have an urge to have a bm.So about six months ago I began to get a pain in my left side. I thought it was kidney related but all test show it's not.At first I thought the pain was only a left sided thing but when it's bad I can feel it at the exact spot on my right side also. Sometimes it feels like a band of pain in my back. Both sides and middle. Other times I can feel the pain through the front of my abdomen like to the right and left of my sternum area.Now I am assuming it's some kind of trapped gas or backed up feces problem. Yet in the past few months I have made myself just about have one bm movement a day. I have started drinking more water and eating more fiber. I also take some kind of osmotic laxative occasionally. Usually if I take milk of magnesia for three days I can have bowel movements for up to a week after the last dose. Then just like always I notice my stools begin to get harder and harder until they are a clump of balls. That's usually when I start the milk of magnesia again.Like now for instance. Last week I took Miralax for six days last week and mom on the last day. I last took mom on Saturday night. I had very loose and small bowel movements every day until just the last couple of days when they have began to get more normal. Yet yesterday I noticed sy stool was beginning to get harder. I actually have to use prep h as a lube for my bm's.What's weird is not all of my stool will be hard or soft. I can have a soft bowel movement with hard clumps of stool in it. Like today I had a small but very hard bowel movement and it had even harder clumps in it also. It actually looked like whole pecans stuck to my stool. Like the outer texture of my stool had weird hard wrinkly spots on it. Yesterday my stool looked normal and today it's all hard?So could the pains in my sides and back be caused by hard stools or trapped gas? Possibly hard stools causing trapped gas? I find it very hard to pass gas sometimes. Only in the morning hours do i pass gas easily. I have had an abdominal ct scan recently that showed nothing so I'm assuming the pain must be coming from the inside of my colon. Mainly at the two bends in the colon.What does trapped gas pains feel like for others. It's just this feels worse than gas. I know I have problems passing gas but I just don't know if that is what is causing my pains.Also when the pain is bad it can actually hurt to move. Like I can phyisically feel the pain in my back. If the pain was in my colon would it cause me to feel pain when I move. It doesn't always hurt when I move. Only when the pains are real bad. I just don't get it myself. I have gone a whole life of having a bm maybe every 3-6 days and never felt any pains. Yet now that I am trying to make myself have daily bowel movements these last six months I feel pain? It's almost as though I'm causing the pains by having daily bowel movements!The other symptoms I have are extreme depression, fatigue, anxiety, no appetite, and a lot of other stuff I can't think of right now. I also have what I believe to be hemmoroids. A doc has never confirmed though. In January a fecal occult test showed blood in my stool. On that same day I had a very hard stool cause an anal fissure and bleeding though so maybe that is why I had blood in my stool.


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## Kathleen M. (Nov 16, 1999)

Sometimes it is trapped gas, but sometimes it is oversensitivity of the gut nerves so you feel normal activity as pain rather than that stimulus just being ignored.Kind of like if you wear a watch you eventually ignore the way it feels on your wrist. That is how we should be with gut moving stuff around stimuli.


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