# Help! Newly diagnosed with IBS and redundant colon and confused.....



## Washroom Princess (Apr 16, 2013)

For as long as I can remember I've had embarrassing washroom issues. In October 2012 I woke up one morning in quite a bit of pain, It was a pain I've never felt before, but being a full time single mother and a full time student I continued about my day. As I sat in one of my classes the pain got so intense I left class and went right to the schools clinic. After spending 2 hours there, when they couldn't figure out what was causing the pain, they assumed it was a UTI, gave me antibiotics and assured me that I should be feeling better within a couple days. 5 days later, when I looked 4 month pregnant, had weird looking spots on my legs and arms and couldn't stand the pain anymore, I went to another clinic. I explained everything to the dr. and he told me that it sounded like chron's and that I would have to get in to my family Dr. to get a referral to a specialist. A few days later I saw my Dr. where I was told that I would have to get an ultra sound in order to get a referral, but the ultra sound wasn't booked for another 4 months. After 5 weeks of being in constant pain and eating only soup, with all my friends nagging at me to go to the hospital, I finally decided to go when everything I swallowed came back up. I was admitted that night where they prepped me for my first colonoscopy scheduled the following day. Preparation was awful. Once I finally got to sleep, I was woken up for the colonoscopy, which they assured me wouldn't be painful. (LIARS). Even though I was sedated, the pain was horrendous. They were unable to finish as they explained I "didn't prep enough". I prepped again that night. The following day I was given 3 sedatives and morphine, surprisingly that didn't help much. It was the worst pain I've ever felt, and I had a 35 hour labor with no drugs. The following day I was diagnosed with IBS and a severely redundant colon. He tried to prescribe me Tylenol 3's and when I explained to him that I can't take those because they knock me out and I have a kid and school, he told me to just take extra strength Tylenol. A week later I began too feel better, but I just haven't been completely ok since. I'm not a big girl at all, but when the pain gets bad, I look 5 or 6 months pregnant. I've been in constant pain again for the past 2 weeks and I just don't know what to do. Can someone, anyone give me any advice on what to do? How can I relieve some of this pain? Are there certain foods to stay away from? Help plz?


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## czygyny (Apr 29, 2013)

First of all, I can relate to your painful experience and know very well that not even morphine seems to make a dent in it. Ibuprophen helps as well as any. You are going to need to start doing your own journey to find out the root causes for your troubles. How we handle stress seems to be a big factor in controlling IBS. You will need to discover what foods aggravate your condition. I am new here, but there seems to be some good tools to get you started on this path.

If you are still having the overbearing, long-lasting pain ask your doctor for an antispasmodic. I am taking ondansetron for mine right now, but it is very expensive. I discovered its spasm-easing qualities in a recent stay in the hospital.

Drugs are fine to help you through the worst of the episodes but it will be up to you to discover what it is about you and your life that is causing this debilitating problem and rectify it.

Something that you can try on your own that has helped me is drinking a BIG glass of water and taking a simethicone product, then laying down on your tummy for a while to help the gas move on through. Laying on your right side, on your stomach and then on the left side seems to help things along (since your bowel moves things along right to left).


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