# IBS - or not? Newly Diagnosed



## salijackt (Sep 20, 2009)

Hello everyone,My name is Amber and I was first diagnosed with IBS unofficially by my family physician about a year ago, when I mentioned alternating diarrhea and constipation. At that time, I had no pain, so we did nothing about it. In fact, because of other medical concerns, I didn't even bother to research or find out anything much about it. I just knew I had to avoid lactose and I'd do fairly well. Then, last May, I began having abdominal pain, and returned to the doctor who referred me to a gastroenterologist. Following a colonoscopy that came back normal, I was diagnosed by that doctor as having IBS. He gave me an anti-spasmodic and told me to take fiber pills. He didn't tell me to follow up or anything.I still wasn't incredibly worried, until a couple of weeks ago when I started experiencing rectal bleeding, and quite a bit of it. This was, of course, after I started college, so I called my GI doctor (who is now 3 hours away) who recommended I go to the emergency room. The ER doctor took a blood test, which was normal, then sent me home and told me to go to a GI doctor. I went to him, and now he is having other tests done, including another blood test for celiac, CT enterography, and upper GI endoscopy. Are rectal bleeding, nausea, and intense abdominal pain normal with IBS? I've had some heartburn pain recently as well and now I have hemorrhoids (which I assume are from the "bowel cleansing" which I had to do for the CT). I'm starting to wonder if this is something else or if these symptoms are normal. The doctor said if all the tests are negative, it is IBS.


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## Kathleen M. (Nov 16, 1999)

rectal bleeding could be the hemorrhoids. It isn't a symptom of IBS. However when IBS acts up that can irritate the hemorrhoids.'Intense abdominal pain can be caused by IBS, and a fair number have upper GI problems like nausea (but that may be they have both upper and lower functional GI issues rather than the nausea being controlled by the colon misbehaving).


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## Yaretzij (Mar 31, 2009)

A friend of mine with similar symptoms had gastritis after all those tests.Good luck!


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