My humble story...

As a kid, I ate what I wanted regardless of the consequences. As a young man of his 20s, I ate (and drank) what I wanted without worry. When I turned 30, my stomach started giving me signs that I ignored: crumblings, and excessive gas. My 40s is where my venture into IBS truly began: the excessive gas was both painful, frequent and embarrassing. And the pain in my stomach grew enough for me to curb my eating habits - especially my Mountain Dew 2-3 times a day habit.

But my symptoms still stayed with me and escalated into my now 50s. Enough that I've done radical life and diet changes and sought out digestive experts.

The hemorrhoids that no one told me about during my colonoscopy, have come to the forefront of my battle. Where I've stayed many of the problems of my IBS with my life and diet changes, I still have to combat the Piles that disturb my life. And (at least in my mind) the worse of it all is the losing of 20 pounds, slimming me to an uneasy 158-ish mark (I'm 6 foot).

I'm on a probiotic for my stomach, natural medicine for Piles, and Amitiza for my constipation. It's slow and I think progression is slow. And my patience is getting the better of me lately. I'm still a young man at heart and mind and these issues are in my naive mind "old man problems". Surely they can't be MY problems. But they are, because whether it's my stomach or the over-bearing Piles, they "tell" they are "still here" every day.

I realize I'm lucky that I didn't have this for the majority of my life. I just hope that I can find relief, a deterrent, that magic elixir for the rest of my life.