# My 29 year long battle



## I reject IBS (Oct 8, 2012)

When I first sought help with my problem at age 15 it did not even have a name.The doctors, after checking my bowels for obvious lumps or tears using a sigmoidoscope told me that I “had nothing wrong” with me. I received no treatment, and my symptoms continued.Doctors in the UK at that time,it seems hadn't heard of IBS.The internet hadn't even been invented either!It took around 11 years to get as far as putting a name to the condition I was suffering from.After 11 years this in itself was a real breakthrough.It did nothing to ease the condition itself but it did do 2 things. 1/It validated me.(meant I had something real,not imagined) 2/It gave me hope that it could improve. So at age around 26 I was told that what I had was called IBS and I was given a small printed leaflet which had on it a list of foods in order of fibre-content. Top of the list was frozen peas, and next came puffed wheat.As a logical problem-solver and eager after 11 years to get started helping myself to improve, I started to have puffed wheat for breakfast every morning and frozen peas at night with my dinner.My symptoms got worse. Much worse. Lack of fibre in my diet was not MY problem.After 11 years, this was all the advice the medical profession had to offer!I had no hope left of it improving so this is when I decided to try to put IBS out of my mind, make the best of what I had and get on with things the best way I could. This is when I first started using avoidance to cope.I had already tried various medications, mainly antispasmodics which effectively slowed down and stopped my gut peristalsis, but this did nothing to tackle the route cause of the problem and only made the condition worse. It is hugely disapointing for me. I have to battle with this disappointment and sadness every day, along with feelings of guilt at the way I have allowed the condition to affect my life. Being bright at school, my future seemed bright once I left school. If there had been a poll at the time, I was probably one of those kids who would have been predicted to go far in whatever area I chose to work in. This didn’t happen. IBS ruined my confidence. It has harmed my self-esteem. It has deprived me of a career and social and financial status. This is all quite hard to take.I often feel quite desperate about it. But there is no solution. It’s just something I have had to try to accept.After 29 years I know that my IBS does not originate in my mind.(Something my GP and I disagree on). It is a physical problem. It does have a psychological element to it but it originates from my diet. It is not something my mind created. Therefor: It is unhelpful of anyone to suggest that I should just be able to “pull myself together” and get on with it.After 29 years of suffering from it, if this was at all possible to do then I would have done soBecause I do have periods where my bowels are quite calm,and because I have learned to carefully manage my IBS (mainly by avoidance) people see little evidence and so probably have trouble accepting it is real and not something I have fabricated in my mind.I do this (carefully manage it ) for several reasons, even though I am a naturally truthful person,and find the deception in itself quite stressful. 1/I do reject the IBS 2/I don’t want to be defined by it. 3/I feel that if I “own " it it gives the condition power and will define me.(I don’t want to be known as “Poo Lady”) 4/I’m always hoping it will go away before I have to explain that I have it. 5/To protect my kids.I don’t want it to enter their psyches,and them to imagine that it is something that they in turn will get.(I feel most strongly about this). 6/I find it humiliating and unacceptable.When I was 19 I tried to attend college. But had to give it up after a few weeks when I had to visit the loo 4 or 5 times PER HOUR, which was just too humiliating. As a woman in particular, being flatulent with uncontrollable bowel habits it is particularly unacceptable. There is only so much humiliation one person can endure.So ,having tried everything the medics have offered me over the years with no success whatsoever I am no further forward and at times it seems a lot worse off due to the growing burden of the way that it limits my life.To those who would say that I shouldn’t allow it to limit my life I would say that I am not able to look at the problem subjectively .I don’t have that luxury.I am only able to look at it from the perspective of having had the problem for 29 years. That is MY perspective. I wish it were not, but it is.BUT/It WON’T deprive me of all happiness.IBS is not a life-threatening condition.There are people much worse off than me.If a restricted half-life is what I must have, then I WILL have it.I will live my half-life to the fullest and enjoy it as much as I can, will try to remain cheerful and squeeze as much joy out of every day and as much opportunity as I can from every situation, and live in hope of one day finding the solution.I keep searching the internet, reading, watching t.v., looking for ideas and dedicating myself wholeheartedly to those areas of my life in which I can still pull my weight. Achieve, challenge and strive to be a useful person.So,there it is.The ugly truth.My story.


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