You are currently browsing the monthly archive for April 2007.
We all know that having IBS sucks. But, being a woman with IBS sucks even more. Because IBS reacts to hormone fluctuations. In particular, it reacts to my menstrual cycle. UGH! So for a couple of days a month, no amount of meds, fiber, relaxation or begging and pleading can put a dent in my IBS symptoms. I’ll admit, it used to be a lot worse before I had my son. It used to be so bad that I could not function the first day or two of my period. I had manipulated it with my birth control pills to make sure it always started on a Saturday because I couldn’t leave the house. Between menstrual cramps that I had to take prescription medicine for and the diarrhea from hell, I was totally useless one weekend a month.
But for some reason, since I had my son things are better. The menstrual cramps respond to OTC meds (yay Aleve!) although sometimes it wears off faster than the bottle says it should. And for some reason the cramping and diarrhea are no where near as bad. I think part of it is a new type of birth control pill that I have been on since I had my son. In an attempt to decrease some other bad side effects, my OB/GYN put me on a pill that has different levels of hormones through the month, gradually increasing as the month goes on. I think this gradual change is much much easier on my body. I don’t have the emotional upheaval that I used to have and I am way more friendly and less cranky. And best of all, it seems to be much easier on my bowels. YAY! But still, I feel icky a few days of the month and I know there is nothing I can do about it. Kind of a bummer really. But my period starts in the middle of the week and I survive it. At least, this month I survived it. Although Tuesday afternoon at work was a little iffy. I ran to the bathroom 5 times in a hour for what was thankfully false alarms. But ended up having a bit of a rough evening. Oh well. Small steps I guess.
Luckily by today, day three, the added effects of my cycle are wearing off. Thankfully. Now if only this head cold the Kid gave me would go away so I could get some sleep.
I love Marshmallow Peeps! No one else in my family does, but I adore them. Of course, every one else in my family can have chocolate and does not need to rely on pure sugar candy for their Easter Basket enjoyment.
I had a weekend that was part hell and part heaven. We had to travel again to the in-laws for the holidays. The trip up felt like it took a lifetime. I felt so horrible, I was imagining doing great bodily harm to the Hubby for dragging me to his parents house. I was super nauseous and I don’t really know why. I get like that sometimes, all part of the packaged deal. And, and a little aside that is not at all related to anything else here, and just because I need to gripe, I am still sore from sleeping on the little itty bitty bed they have in the guest room (I have a king, they have a double). I can’t breathe without hitting the Hubby. It sucks.
So, the trip up took forever, but after we got there, things where ok. I felt better. And the Kid loved the egg hunt. For a young toddler, he is pretty darn good at finding eggs. Of course, while he was’t looking we had to give all the chocolate filled eggs to the Niece and Nephew. But he never noticed. I actually could eat the food they made, always a happy bonus. Chicken one night and then real turkey sandwichs for lunch the next day. It’s always a pleasure to go somewhere and not have to worry about my insides exploding from the food.
The trip back home was much better. I felt much better. And actually did more than grunt in the Hubby’s direction when he asked me how I was doing. Besides, I was coming home to my Marshmallow Peeps. Which I would love to devour nonstop until the whole package is gone. I have already had four today. I really need some help here. Some one come eat them for me!!!
Just kidding, no need to do that. I’m an adult, I can control myself. Besides, I’d just go buy more.
McDonald’s Chicken Nuggets- although I confess, I might be more attached to the Sweet and Sour sauce than the actual nuggets… I am doing much better, we used to go every week. Now we go once every few weeks. And I can’t resist a bite or two of my husbands double quarter pounder with cheese which has so many banned things in it, I won’t even bother to write them out.
Sprite- carbonation is bad for someone who already produces enough gas for a small country but it helps with the upset stomach. Isn’t it enough that I don’t drink the caffeinated stuff??? I miss caffeine. Dr. Pepper and Cherry Coke where my favorites.
Chocolate- This will never go away. There is no life without chocolate. I have just changed the way I eat it. I can’t sit and eat a chocolate bar any more (sniffle… I love snickers and peanut butter cups and so many other things that I can’t talk about any more) but I have gained a new appreciation for chocolate cake. Currently, I love swiss cake rolls. yum. Bring on the fake artificial stuff. It’s the natural stuff by body can’t take!
I’m sure there is more than this, but I can’t think of it at the moment….
I was recently asked in a comment: Do you think your state of mind and level of activity play a role in how bad your diarrhea is?
I wish I could have been writing this yesterday morning, but since lap tops don’t like showers, I was forced to lose the brilliant thoughts I had yesterday and try to reconstruct them today. I am sure I’ll fail brilliantly. 
But I’m feeling brave today, so I’ll give it a try.
Obviously I am not expert, but in my experience, there is definitely a link between how I perceive my symptoms to be and what’s going on in the brain. Stress is an IBS trigger for me. So the more stressed I am, the worse I feel. I have found that I can only survive so long in a super high stressed state before I start to feel it in my belly. If I am stressed too long I suddenly feel crampy and icky and start counting the bathrooms around me and plotting the fastest way to get there.
The worst times are when I think there is going to be something in the way of me and the bathroom. Going to a new person’s house (who knows how many bathrooms there are? or worse, where they are located in the house). Or when I am in the car with my husband and he takes to take a path to a store that I don’t know, I get stressed. I like the routes I know, with all the bathroom locations firmly in my head. I do my best to make him travel the same way time after time.
I also gets stressed and start feeling bad when I have to be somewhere at a specific time. Never fails, five minutes before I have to leave, I have to be in the bathroom. It sucks. I have a type A personality damn it! I can’t be late! This of course, does not help the situation at all. I have started leaving earlier and earlier and that has helped a lot. I survived a trip to the Kid’s pediatrician yesterday all by myself. Had to pick him up and take him and made it there and through the whole apointment ok. I’ve noticed if I get distracted sometimes it helps me feel better. That’s when I know it’s my brain acting out more than my belly.
As far as activity level, I have noticed that some days the more I move around the worse I feel. That sucks since I don’t always want to be a couch potato. There have been countless days where I am feeling great until I get ready to go somewhere. Then it all goes downhill….. On days when the diarrhea is really bad, I sit on the couch all day doing nothing and just try to sleep, because the more I move the worse I feel. I have been know to go to bed really early in the evenings when I don’t feel well, hoping to avoid a bought of diarrhea. The thought is that if I can relax all of my body enough that my intestines will relax enough that I won’t end up in the bathroom. Of course, this doesn’t always work. I have been awakened at 2 am more times than I care to remember because the belly is spazaming like crazy.
Things are better now than they used to be. The Bentyl my GI prescribed has helped. It has also calmed me down a bit mentally, I feel more confident and more able to leave the house. But it is still a slow process and it’s not perfect. I’ve missed things the last few weeks that I would have loved to gone too. But I notice that I am not so edgy when I leave the house. And not much in a rush to get back home.
I wish there was a simple anwser.
What do you all think?
I don’t know about you, but I make New Year’s Resolutions every year. Usually though, they are half-hearted and vague things that I have forgotten by January 8th. But this year was different. Really.
Christmas 2006 sucked. I felt bad all day. And the day after Christmas, I spent 6 hours straight in the bathroom. I swear. You can ask my husband who brought me sprite and water and when I was feeling adventurous, plain baked chicken. We where at my in-laws house, and I spent the morning on the toilet in horrible pain or laying on the bathroom floor too nauseated to move. It was the first time I had ever had rectal bleeding with my diarrhea. I kept having horrible pains and small movements of blood and mucus and just lovely gross stuff.
For SIX HOURS STRAIGHT.
When it calmed down, I decided that I had had enough. It was time to take care of me. To get the the bottom of all the things I just live with because I didn’t place myself first or care enough about myself to try to fix. When the bleeding kept coming and going after I got home from vacation, I called the doctor. Who sent me to the GI. And finally, I am starting to work on me, and what I need to do to feel better about myself and my life.
For years I have felt embarrassed by my stomach troubles. I always felt like a burden on my friends and a part-popper (ha. ha.) when symptoms would get in the way of fun. I tried to keep it to myself and tried to not make a big deal about it. But as the list of trigger foods got longer, and the symptoms got worse, the circle of people who had to know got wider. I am trying to tell myself that there is nothing to be embarrassed about. It is what it is. And I can only work to control the IBS so much. I am lucky in that I have a wonderful husband who reminds me whenever I need it that I didn’t do anything to cause this. It’s not my fault. After all, as he points out, I am not making myself sick on purpose.
So this year, my resolution was to get to a doctor and feel better. To take better care of myself, and to get to a point where I feel good about me. So it’s The Year Of Me. No more excuses, and no apologies. I’m working on the IBS. I have a GI that I like, and if the Bentyl he has me on now doesn’t work, I am not going to give up. I’ll be working with him until I can live a life I enjoy. And if he ticks me off, he isn’t the only GI around. I’ll find another one if I need to. And because stress and your mental state are such a part of this, I’m working on other things to – other “me” things that I have put off or just haven’t cared enough about. For example, I’ve struggled with my weight for years. Since my son was born, I’ve lost 30 pounds. I want to lose another 20. I want to feel good about how I look so that I can resist the junk food that makes me sick. I need to see a dermatologist. I keep putting it off. I have a mole that has bothered me for years, and damn it, its coming off. We’re just going to have to find the money. I am going to go on a date with my husband this year! I vaguely remember what that is like. So my friends who have offered to baby sit damn well better pay up cause I’m going to collect.
I started this blog as part of the new me. The mental stress that goes along with a chronic disease can be debilitating. And, as much as they love me, my friends really just don’t understand. They haven’t been there. There average person gets diarrhea a few times a year, not a few times a month, and definitely not a few times a week. My friends don’t have to know every pit stop on any route they travel, and most of them don’t fear traffic jams. They don’t ask for the location of the bathroom in the restaurant before the menus are even opened. So this blog really is for me. Some where to let it out. Somewhere I can put the lots that race through my head. The ”yay me!” and the “woe is me”. Read it. Don’t read it. Which ever suits you. I am still going to write. Because it makes me feel better. I’ve been holding it in for ten years, and I’m tired of it. And who knows, maybe some one out there will read it and understand exactly what I am going through. And maybe that will make both of us feel better.
My day started with me having to put my make-up on while sitting on the Throne.
Thankfully, my day got better.
What is it about mornings that make my IBS so bad? I am tired of waking up every morning feeling gassy and bloaty and just gross. I am always wondering if I am going to make it to work on time. Luckily, work is currently less than a five minute drive away (but I am supposed to be job hunting and I am sure that will change). I can’t get up any earlier because I feel even worse if I don’t get enough sleep (makes late nights out with the girls rather difficult don’t it?). So I don’t really know what to do to make mornings easier. I get up, take my meds, have a very bland breakfast, cross my fingers and hope it all goes well.
Anyone have any better ideas??
The Hubby, the Kid and I left the house yesterday! We went over to our friends house. They have a little one the same age as the Kid and a backyard for the two of them to play in. Best of all – they have two bathrooms. So I am not so uptight about hanging out at their house. Plus, they know all about the IBS side of my life.
I thought I was doing good, figured I’d make it all evening without issue. Nope. I wasn’t feeling good, thought it was just because I was hungry, they eat dinner way later than we do and it was past my dinner time. When I don’t eat, my stomach cramps and then it makes my intestines cramp. So in an effort to short circuit that cycle, I had a baked potato and butter. Ops. Most butter is a “no-no”. I use Country Crock at home because I have discovered through trial and error that it doesn’t react with my IBS. I didn’t think I had too much of her butter but I don’t think it sat well. I was in their bathroom on and off for awhile with cramps and pretty much D, worse reaction I have had to something in weeks. *sigh*
We ended up leaving about the time we would have normally so I don’t feel too bad. And I am glad we went, because the Kid got to play outside a lot. But I am still not so good today, so I am here at home and the Kid and the Hubby are at the mall waiting to see the Easter Bunny. 
At least I will get to see the picture….
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17873835/
What a blow to people who need this drug to function. I hope that drug companies continue to look for drugs to make life livable for all of the people who suffer with IBS.
