# Newbie, Feeling Hopeless and Miserable



## Techie (Oct 13, 2014)

Hi everyone. I've joined this group in a moment of depression because I just need to talk about this and get it off my chest. I've hit a point where I'm feeling pretty hopeless and miserable.

I work in the Alberta oil sands, and that work requires me to live on "camps" with coworkers and other contractors for two weeks at a time (my schedule is two weeks on work, two weeks home). That arrangement worked perfectly fine for me for almost a full year without any real issues of any kind. I used to get up early in the mornings and run laps around the camp. I was actually feeling healthier than I'd felt in years. Then, one day, I started to notice that I was having cramps during my runs. A few times I had to make a beeline for the nearest door into the camp so that I could get to a bathroom. But at first it wasn't major, it was just an inconvenience.

Then one day the unspeakable happened. I was halfway through my run when the urge hit me HARD. The nearest door that I could access (the camp has wings, and your keycard only works on the wing you're staying in) required me to run about half a mile, and I just KNEW, immediately, that there was no way that was going to happen. I started veering toward the building and it all happened at once. Before I knew it I was crouched behind the air exchangers between two of the wings, making an ungodly mess of myself and praying to whomever might answer that no one would look out their window. I had no way to clean myself up other than to wipe my hands on the gravel around me. I was making myself gag and was absolutely in tears. My only saving grace that day was that no one else (out of the 5000 or so other residents, if you can believe it) was out and about yet, so I was able to shamefully make my way back to the backdoor of my own wing, up to my room, and into the shower without anyone coming across me. I bawled my eyes out in the shower that day, and ended up not going to work because after what had just happened I couldn't handle the thought of getting on the bus that took us into site.

From then on I was a nervous wreck every time I had to get on a bus. Even though the buses at that job had toilets on them, it was barely possible to use them because of the poor quality of the roads we travelled. The drive was half an hour one way, and it was half an hour of torture.

Things didn't get better, and eventually I started questioning whether I might have colitis. My mother has it, you see, and it surfaced for her about a year after I was born. When my symptoms started to pop up my daughter was about two, so it seemed like an awful coincidence. I started to look into it. Before I could really get anywhere, however, my family and I were staying with the inlaws one night when I had another episode. At about five in the morning I had to run up to their bathroom and I ended up in it four or five times over the course of an hour. The last time I noticed a rather decent amount of blood and I started to panic. My husband took me to the emergency room in town, where the doctor on call could find no running blood and figured I'd just torn something from the bathroom episode. She did, however, suggest that I see a gasteroenterologist, which I 100% agreed with.

So eventually I get to see this doctor (it took about four months of torturous waiting). Over the next couple of months I get a bunch of tests done, including a colonoscopy and a CT-scan on my abdomen. They find absolutely nothing. The doctor concludes that I have IBS, with the main trigger being anxiety. He gives me a prescription for Dicitel and sends me on my way.

I'm now on a new job that requires an HOUR-long bus ride each way, and the buses they provide don't even have a toilet on them even if I wanted to try to use it. Desperate for something to help, I tried the Dicitel for about three months. Sometimes I thought it might be helping, but then I'd have an episode and couldn't help but assume that it wasn't. Eventually I ended up speaking with a really nice nurse on our work site who offered me something she called "stomach protectors" to try. The package says "Ranitidine". For a while I thought they might be helping as well, but then there was another flare-up so I don't think they are.

All of that has been torturous to deal with, but today...well, today is why I ended up on this website. Today, on the way back to camp on the bus, I started feeling a really bad episode coming. I tried to breathe through it. I tried closing my eyes and listening to music. I tried my very best to fall asleep. I tried just counting continuously as a way of distracting my brain. But eventually it became painfully clear that it just wasn't going to happen. In front of half of my coworkers I had to stumble up to the front of the bus, gagging the whole way, and inform the bus driver that she had to pull over NOW. I had to sprint off the bus, run down a dirt road (that I was just lucky was there) and around a wall of trees where I couldn't be seen by the road. While trying desperately not to bawl my eyes out again, I had to squat in the trees and try my best not to make a mess of myself. It's well into autumn here too, so all I had to clean myself up with was the dry, crumbly leaves on the ground. I did manage to clean myself up, but it must have been painfully obvious to my coworkers what had went down...after all, if I had only needed to throw up or something, why would I have gone sprinting out of site into the woods?

I have never been so mortified in all my life as I was walking back onto that bus and taking my seat again. And even after all of that, my stomach didn't let up. I had another absolutely torturous 25 minutes of bus ride to go. And to top it all off, once I got back to my room at camp, I felt an urge, ran to the bathroom, sat there for ten minutes with absolutely nothing happening, and then found blood in the toilet when I eventually stood up.

The conclusion of the story, as you can imagine, is that I'm embarrassed, scandalized, and mortified, and I have no idea how I'm going to be able to convince myself to get on that bus tomorrow morning. I'm seriously considering calling in sick, but we don't get sick days so I would lose a lot of money by not going in, and I'm the only breadwinner in my family.

I just don't know what to do. I'm feeling extremely depressed, tired, and frustrated. I've done journals before to try and figure out my triggers, but the only thing I could ever really conclude that definitely bothers me is ice cream, and I haven't had any in weeks. And so far the only thing that I've found that helps is Immodium, but I know that it's not good for you to take that all the time, so I've been trying to avoid it as much as possible. And after today, I'm ten times as anxious as I ever was, because how can I possibly deal with something like that happening again?


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## bendis15 (Oct 14, 2014)

So sorry to hear about this horrible experience but you are not alone. I have been suffering with this for about 10 years on and off mostly on. I did not have any blood which I believe you should have that checked. I did undergo a bunch of test like yourself and was told I had IBS. I was using Imodium which after awhile of taking it your system become immune to it, well mine did. I was horrified to go to work or even get on a bus I tried to drive myself everywhere always scouting out bathrooms. My life was miserable so many accidents I can't even recall how many. I always carry and where maxi pads and keep a change of underwear with me. Recently my doctor has prescribed lotronex to me and I must say so far so good,haven't had any accidents and the urges have mostly gone away. I have been taking it for about 1 month.


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## IBS & Surviving (Jun 24, 2014)

I am so sorry to hear this story. I have occasionally felt this urgency, but have fortunately made it in time. Do you have any stress with this job? I know that my symptoms are much worse when I have a lot of stress at work. My doctor gave me great advise when I was diagnosed. He told me I had to care less. Not be careless or become poor employee. But I had to let go of the emotional stress I had given myself. This advise has helped me tremendously! I use meditation techniques to force my body to respond to my brain. I know it sounds whacky, but I truly believe I have an impact on the severity of my episodes. Think about it, your bus ride episode when you tried to sleep, etc. was longer than the running episode. Maybe you were controlling it a little bit.

The other thing that has helped is to figure out my food triggers and to religiously avoid them. Try the FODMAP diet on this website. I can eat a lot of foods that are on the list, I've just learned that I can't eat them very often. You might also be eating a combination of foods that are the trigger. For example, my sister can't eat chocolate and pears within a day of each other.

My 3rd piece of advise is to go back to the doctor and look at other options. Maybe even get a second opinion.

Good luck! You are not alone. Forget what coworkers think. They are probably just concerned for you. You have to learn to laugh about this crap (pun intended) or it will make you sicker!


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