# someone please help, beyond chronic constipation



## superglue74 (Sep 23, 2011)

I am an 18 year old female with chronic constipation. I go months without having a regular BM, i do not have them unless I over dose on laxatives and put myself threw severe pain. When i was young i was given laxatives continously. obviously this caused damage and now i am past the point of dependent. nothing works, when miralax first came out i would take huge doses of it every weekend in the largest size gatorade bottle to cleanse myself and eventually that stopped working. I drink entire bottles of magnesium citrate with no results, enemas do not even work. I have tried probiotics and chia seeds also. I fear that if i do not start going to the bathroom regularly it will eventually kill me. does anyone know anything to do to help me? to retrain my bowels to move without laxatives?? And when i say i take laxatives i am talking around 12 extra strength pills with barely any outcome


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## Minks (Jun 1, 2011)

superglue74 said:


> I am an 18 year old female with chronic constipation. I go months without having a regular BM, i do not have them unless I over dose on laxatives and put myself threw severe pain. When i was young i was given laxatives continously. obviously this caused damage and now i am past the point of dependent. nothing works, when miralax first came out i would take huge doses of it every weekend in the largest size gatorade bottle to cleanse myself and eventually that stopped working. I drink entire bottles of magnesium citrate with no results, enemas do not even work. I have tried probiotics and chia seeds also. I fear that if i do not start going to the bathroom regularly it will eventually kill me. does anyone know anything to do to help me? to retrain my bowels to move without laxatives?? And when i say i take laxatives i am talking around 12 extra strength pills with barely any outcome


Hi, I'm just wondering if you are doing anything with your diet? Eating lots of fiber soluble and insoluble? I don't know if that will help but it's a start. Google IBS diet and you'll get information on what foods to eat. Do you take acacia fiber? It is soluble fiber and you can take up to 35 mgs/day of it. You have to work up slowly though.Hope you can find some relief.


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## micropb (Jun 18, 2011)

I used to be that way. I had to colonoscopy preps to clear myself out since I was waiting too long for a BM to occur naturally. Eventually my doc had me do a colonoscopy prep over a weekend, then start taking Miralax 2-4 times a day, with dulcolax once per weekend (I have a M-F job, so my schedule was based around that). This helped provide some relief (although now I'm on amitiza, which is generally not recommended for women of reproductive age). I don't know what your life habits are (diet and exercise may help if you do not do them already), but my regimen was kind of a last resort. Even now, on amitiza, I still have to take a stimulant laxative on weekends, even though it has helped a lot. It is really frustrating. Even more so when you're young and know that this has a possibility of a lot of trial and error, and long term discomfort. (FYI-they ruled out diet since I don't eat much meat or dairy, eat a lot of fruits/veggies and run >6 miles/day)It wasn't until I switched GIs that they recommended an actual routine between miralax and stimulant laxatives. Maybe a visit to your doctor is in order to discuss a new routine?


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## annie7 (Aug 16, 2002)

yes sounds like a visit to a gastro doc would help. ask for a transit test (sitz marker test) so the doc can actually see how slow your transit is and then he /she can recommend a plan of action.chronic constipation really is miserable. hope you can get some relief from it soon. good luck!


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## Sean (Feb 8, 1999)

I hate to say it, but stimulant laxatives may be a permanent part of your life. I have has chronic constipation since I was about 16. I don't think I ever abused laxatives, but they are a necessity of life now. I never have a spontaneous bowel movement. After being diagnosed with colonic inertia, I finally had a gastroenterologist who was a realist about my situation and put me on a combination laxative program that included duloclax. I try to make sure that I have a bowel movement of some kind at least twice a week - and that means a laxative or an enema. I use Dulcolax tablets every weekend, often along with magnesium citrate. I take the tablets after I get home from work on Friday evening and the mag citrate when I wake up on Saturday. I usually have multiple clearing bowel movements on Saturday afternoon. Sometimes I have to repeat the Dulcolax on Saturday night or give myself an enema. I try to make sure that I have another bowel movement during the middle of the week, usually with a Dulcolax suppository or some other fast acting rectal laxative. The whole process really sucks because of the cramping, bloating and urgency and the fact that I am pretty much confined to home while the laxatives do their thing. I have just learned to accept it because I do not think there is any way that my colon is going to work without them. Sean


superglue74 said:


> I am an 18 year old female with chronic constipation. I go months without having a regular BM, i do not have them unless I over dose on laxatives and put myself threw severe pain. When i was young i was given laxatives continously. obviously this caused damage and now i am past the point of dependent. nothing works, when miralax first came out i would take huge doses of it every weekend in the largest size gatorade bottle to cleanse myself and eventually that stopped working. I drink entire bottles of magnesium citrate with no results, enemas do not even work. I have tried probiotics and chia seeds also. I fear that if i do not start going to the bathroom regularly it will eventually kill me. does anyone know anything to do to help me? to retrain my bowels to move without laxatives?? And when i say i take laxatives i am talking around 12 extra strength pills with barely any outcome


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## aaltimas1 (Aug 15, 2010)

I really hear you guys and I am in a similar boat and it is very scarry to think about having to use laxitive for the rest of onces life, there has got to be a way to get the bowel moving. There is a sugerical procdure called mace I read about on this site about a fellow who had chronic consipation of the worst kind it seemed to help him lots. It here there do some time of surgery that allows you to do an ennema for your belly button and make the ennema alot easier to do if you look back in the you see them fellow post about it. I recently found out that there is another type of laxtive a person can use and that aloe vera I never knew this and it might be worth trying if other laxitives are not working. Anyways just keep going don't lose hope there got to be a way to get the bowels working again on there own.Andrew


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## lindielou (Jul 11, 2010)

I don't know if you have seen a really good Gastroenterologist about your problem - they are not all good. For years I saw doc's who recommended one laxative after another. I finally found an excellent doctor who has helped me a lot. But, that said, he cannot cure me, my non-working colon is with me for life. I have had chronic constipation since I was an adolescent, I am now seventy-nine years of age and the pain and discomfort goes on, but less so since my latest colonoscopy. If I were you I would search the internet for a Gastroenterologist who specializes in Neuromuscular diseases of the intestinal tract.My doctor started my treatment by having me take Benefiber as directed on the bottle, but that did not do the trick. I now take 5 heaping tablespoons of Benefiber daily, and Miralax at bedtime. If you are not taking large doses of fiber, that may be a good place to start. But please find and ask a good doctor.


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## Isis2011 (Sep 10, 2011)

I've had IBS-C for about 9 years. Until recently it's been similar to chronic constipation, along with a couple of IBS specific symptoms. I've tried many things, right now the magic formula is 200mg Colace and 200mg magnesium 1x/day, Citrucel 2-3x/day, and oat bran cereal with flax meal every morning. If I skip any of that once, the balance shifts and it takes a couple of days to get back to "normal". I won't take stimulant laxatives because I'm afraid once I do I'll never get off them. I get into enough trouble if I resort to taking Phillips, takes me months to get off that. About 2 years ago I had a really bad night that at first I didn't associate with IBS at all. I thought something serious and awful was happening to me. I had sharp pain in the upper left part of my belly, just below my ribs. The pain increased until it was not only in that part of my belly, but on my side and around to my back as well. It felt like knives cutting me open. There was a small area of swelling right where my ribcage ended, about the size of a large olive. My doc said to call in the morning if it wasn't better by then, or go to the ER. All night long I was running to the bathroom every 20 minutes or so with very soft stools, not exactly diarrhea as I think of it, but the cramps sure felt like diarrhea. I also had some reflux, which I get occasionally. This literally kept me up all night. I took max doses of Pepcid and Maalox, which did absolutely nothing. Finally at some point I thought to use heat, and that was the only thing that made any difference. The next day those sharp pains were still there, but much less. However, everything I tried to eat hurt my stomach and made me bloated. My gastro doc ran every test in the book and found nothing. I was blown away - I was sure she would find SOMETHING. She was sure she knew what it was until that test was negative. The stomach issues continued to get worse over the next 3 weeks, until all I could eat was oat bran cereal. The docs didn't know what it was and had no idea what to do. Then it started getting better, and after another week or so I was eating almost normally. Although I usually don't have pain in that area anymore, something always feels different there, as if something inside me is permanently swollen, or has shifted position. I feel something moving against my rib as I move around. Occasionally it starts hurting more, then I get some reflux, and I take that as a warning. Oat bran cereal and flax meal every day, along with Gax-X or Phazyme with heat as needed seem to help but it never completely goes away. The docs say there are no major organs in this area, but various organs connect to each other there. They say it's a particularly hard area to image, so they don't even try. I was shocked that when I was in her office, still in some pain, with visible swelling, that she didn't try to image or even palpate the area at all. She just ran all the tests that protocol told her were appropriate. Don't they ever think out of the box? So, the latest is I was prescribed Levsin (Hyoscyamine Sulfate) to use as needed. Has anyone with symptoms like mine taken this?


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## GUTted (Jul 2, 2009)

There's a TV programme in the UK called Embarrassing Bodies, in one of the episodes there was a teenager who would go months without going to the toilet. For about the last half an hour I've been trying to find this episode on YouTube / Channel 4 OD to link you to it but I can't find it. I was going to try and link you to it because they did a whole bunch of tests on him and even though you're in the States, I guess it's the sorta tests they could do on you?Anyway, if you feel inclined to look for the episode, I think it was series 4, the boy was about 14 years old, he was on the show with his mum.


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