I feel exhausted and tired of IBS.
Nice to be part of this forum; I was diagnosed IBS in 2011 after a severe Diarrhea episode one night, was also bleeding light blood and always was struggling with my stomach problems. They did a colonoscopy with a biopsy and showed IBS after all these test. I had to manage a new life, no sodas, no junk food, I remenber the Doc words when I asked how do I know what to eat or not to eat? he replied...you can´t...you just have to play with the food and see what causes you bad IBS. I quit sodas, mexican, changed into heatlhy food, water everyday, and it helped but...not 100%. Problem is I developed Hypocondriac disorder. Everything little IBS problem quickly brings to my mind I developed a Colon Can***. Every little byte I take to my mouth I am thinking if it will blow me up and send me straight into the WC. Causes me strong anxiety depression..I live in constantly fear...I went to Psico tretatment and one of the things the Doc said when you go to the WC just go do your thing, and flash the toilet and Bye. This will make your anxiety proggresively fade away. It helped but when I use the WC the need to look if stool has blood etc eats me up. Eventhough I managed and when I think calmy I usually come to the point that, if you had a canc** you would have passed already and not since 2022 still alive and kicking. The true is I feel tired...mentally, exhausted, I am only 56 tuned 12 May and feel I am in my last life days. I just wanted to share this and someone to talk...I am sure many of you are in my same boat. God bless you
Similar boat here. Started in my mid 40s. My dad passed from colon cancer so you can only imagine my thoughts and anxiety. And I am saying what you said... "If I had cancer I would be gone by now so its IBS, relax". Kinda helps but its still so frustrating especially when you take a vacation from stress and all of a sudden you find yourself looking for bathrooms everywhere you are. So vacation wasnt even a vacation. I think it was the half half milk and the eggs that did it to me while on vacation but then again... anything does it.
Still dont know what's worse... The pains, the bloating, the diarrhea.
Hope you can find comfort for long periods of time.
How long can you go without getting a flare up?
Have you tried to keep track of every thing you consume?actually I been good for year but probably when summer and heat not good for me. Thing is I spotted like tiny pieces of light red in stool looked piece of food, then reminded me I had night before watermelon. I was told if it was colon cancer color would be different. Despite that it didn’t help into falling into a huge panic attack that caused me anxiety to limits. Thing is now it’s like I don’t want to eat cause I’m afraid after eating I’ll rush to the WC again and terrified what I’ll find.
Yeah, undigested foods will scare us for sure. Dark black is the color we dont want to see. One day I saw dark black spots. After some time I realized it was the blueberries I was eating for breakfast. Lol. Dont forget, internal hemmroids is a thing. Bright red will be showing up in bowl or on paper. I had to get 4 of them banded.
Nobody told me getting older means a ton of ailments.Age certainly has much to do with… I remember when I was younger hanging out with friends partying I wouldn’t gave a damn bout it. Now it’s like your mind says let me hand you some homework to smash your brains thinking…
I am sorry you are feeling depressed, scared and unhappy because of the IBS. Yes, it can make us all feel like that at times, I think. I know I have felt quite low indeed at times.
But you are right: if you'd had cancer, I think you would almost certainly have found out by now after those years! One good thing to hold onto, is that the results of the colonoscopy were "IBS" and they found nothing worrisome. Just ride on that if you can.
But IBS has a cruel trick of making us scared either way!
It's very interesting, what your Psych. doctor said! He might have a point.
I have no therapy or guidance, but a little while ago I instinctively found myself just deciding to go #2 in the morning, accepting what happened, not bothering to examine things in the pan (!), and just flush, wash, and go. End of story. And strangely, the more I did that, I think something inside me started to at least partially re-set.
You know that saying "fake it til you make it"? Well that's kind of what I found myself doing. Just went to the toilet, flushed, washed and got on with my day. As if I could just live an ordinary day doing ordinary things, and even made some mental plans for what job I had to do next, or "where shall I go for a walk today?" as I sat down on the toilet.
OK, my gut is not 100% perfect but in some way doing that did help. At least from the psychological angle anyway, and day by day things felt more manageable somehow.
So I have definitely improved as a general thing, though do still have to be a bit careful about what I eat.
May God bless you too, and I hope you will slowly improve as time goes by.
