# New member, looking for help.



## mcanada (Dec 8, 2017)

Hi everyone,

I am not new to reading posts on here due to google search after google search of "IBS is ruining my life"...
I am 22 years old. A healthy female who genuinely loves life and seeing the world, if not just parts around town that I love. I live in a beautiful place. However, I can barely leave my home anymore. I was diagnosed with depression fairly young, around 14. I was put on different medications throughout the years as my body and mind became used to each one and its effects would wear off making me feel very sad, empty, and unfufiled in every day life. I could not be happy about anything. Not necessarily overly sad, or in misery all the time.. it would go from feeling a giant downward spiral, to sometimes feeling numb and nothing at all. I rarely experienced positive feelings, and even to this day I struggle, though when it comes to my depression/anxiety, I am so accustomed to it that I feel those are not huge obstacles for me in life anymore.
My stomach troubles began shortly after my diagnoses. Before school every day I would sit on the toilet for what seemed to be an hour and a half making sure I was empty, so that I wouldn't have to go at school. I think back then it was more nervousness about going the dreaded number 2 in public washrooms. oh how I wish those were my troubles now... Anyways, as years went on, my stomach got worse. Less and less warning times, no sleepovers due to fear of having an upset stomach, missing school because of my fears. 
I had an unfortunate event happen to me just before my twenties. Things had gotten bad in life, and I took a lot of pills one day. A lot being enough to do some damage, but I won't go into great detail about it. I experienced the worst pain in my stomach after that event for a couple days, and was in hospital for about a week. Being treated physically and mentally. I did not eat while I was there in fear of an attack, and at the time I was also into starving my body of food and water for days on end. It was a pretty bad time of my life. After that event, my stomach was never the same. It doesn't really matter what I eat now, or even drink, I will have unpredictable and very urgent BMs at any time of the day or night. This has caused me to have about 3 accidents and countless near accidents. I panic when out of the house now. Being in the car with someone else causes me great distress as well. I have fears when I go somewhere new, or if I know where toilets are in places, but fear someone will be using it when I need to go. As i have almost no warning, and will panic even greater if I know someone is in a single bathroom and there are no more in sight. I get the sweats, shake, and can feel the watery BM readily about to explode out of me. This causes me to cry and feel so ashamed, whether I make it to a toilet on time or not. Because of this, I have had to begin working from home. Which is okay, as I have always wanted to anyways. But small errands in a day, or trips with my S/O have become so overwhelmingly stressful for me that I pretty much never leave the house. My S/O is very understanding and sympathetic. But I can not help but feel like a worthless, useless, pain in the behind pretty much 24/7. I look back and miss the days where I could hold my stomach problems in... I don't know if years of starving/laxative abuse, depression/anxiety disorders and meds, dairy intolerace, or just plain stress panic and having had accidents have taken me to this level of IBS. I have had a colonoscopy to no avail. "Its IBS, theres nothing you can really do" said the gastro doctor. My doctor doesn't care and seems to want to perscribe anti depressants to every little problem. I don't know what to do, or why I am writing this. I feel i am in for a life of impending doom and will always have to be strapped to a toilet. I don't want to live my life this way forever. I want children, and a family, and to be able to go places, see things, be alive.
If anyone out there has felt how I feel, which I know many of you do.. please tell me how you cope. I am at a loss.
Kind regards and thank you if you made it this far.


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