Hey, I'm new here and I don't have an official diagnosis yet (seeing GI doc at the end of the month), but I have family with Crohn's and my IBS symptoms seem to have gotten a lot worse since May. Typical IBS symptoms for me are abdominal pain on the lower left side, sometimes severe, minutes before a bowel movement, which was usually diarrhea. After these episodes I'd feel much better. This went on for years, and I'd also get some intermittent pain in my upper right and left sides from trapped gas in the colonic flexures. Anxiety seemed to bring the IBS on, while exercise and eating right made it go away for months at a time completely (normal BM and everything!). 3 years ago I had a colonoscopy that showed no abnormalities whatsoever.
In May I started to get a lot of loose stools (sometimes up to 5 a day!) for no reason. This is all that happened for about a month. It wasn't accompanied by pain or anything, until about early July when I started getting pain at random spots on my abdomen, but mostly on the lower right side this time. It's usually crampy pain, but there are times when it's sharp and stabby, and other times when it feels no different than a stomach virus. What concerns me about this pain is not only its location, but when it happens as well. As I said, the IBS pain I'm used to only really happens before I have to run to the bathroom! Recently, the pain has been happening at random times, especially at night, and the thing is that it isn't triggered by anxiety. Some of my other symptoms include fatigue, sometimes really bad, that comes and goes throughout the day, pain around my joints (whether it's joint or muscle pain I don't know), headaches, and sometimes my temperature will get as high as 99.5, which is unusual for me.
Actually, the thing that pushed me into joining this forum and began to really concern me about IBD is that I could have sworn I saw blood in my BM today (light red, mixed in, not on top).
Every single test I had done (PET/CT, ultrasound, chest X-ray, multiple CBC's, sed rate, CRP, metabolic panel, barium swallow, head CT, B12, IgE, food allergy skin testing) has come back negative other than mild eosinophilia (which has decreased from 1.5-0.7 over the last month or two). I know CRP and sed rate are usually out of whack with IBD, and I'm having my sed rate checked again with the blood work I had today. I'm not necessarily worried about Crohn's, since my aunt has it and she has it really under control, but I'd like to know what's going on with me so I can get on with my life. What do you guys think? Btw, I'm still having the loose stools at least twice a day, usually with a lot of mucus.
In May I started to get a lot of loose stools (sometimes up to 5 a day!) for no reason. This is all that happened for about a month. It wasn't accompanied by pain or anything, until about early July when I started getting pain at random spots on my abdomen, but mostly on the lower right side this time. It's usually crampy pain, but there are times when it's sharp and stabby, and other times when it feels no different than a stomach virus. What concerns me about this pain is not only its location, but when it happens as well. As I said, the IBS pain I'm used to only really happens before I have to run to the bathroom! Recently, the pain has been happening at random times, especially at night, and the thing is that it isn't triggered by anxiety. Some of my other symptoms include fatigue, sometimes really bad, that comes and goes throughout the day, pain around my joints (whether it's joint or muscle pain I don't know), headaches, and sometimes my temperature will get as high as 99.5, which is unusual for me.
Actually, the thing that pushed me into joining this forum and began to really concern me about IBD is that I could have sworn I saw blood in my BM today (light red, mixed in, not on top).
Every single test I had done (PET/CT, ultrasound, chest X-ray, multiple CBC's, sed rate, CRP, metabolic panel, barium swallow, head CT, B12, IgE, food allergy skin testing) has come back negative other than mild eosinophilia (which has decreased from 1.5-0.7 over the last month or two). I know CRP and sed rate are usually out of whack with IBD, and I'm having my sed rate checked again with the blood work I had today. I'm not necessarily worried about Crohn's, since my aunt has it and she has it really under control, but I'd like to know what's going on with me so I can get on with my life. What do you guys think? Btw, I'm still having the loose stools at least twice a day, usually with a lot of mucus.
