Hello everyone.
My name is Sam. I'm a 22 year old recent graduate with a BA in literature and I am currently a self-employed artist.
I've been dealing with intense stomach pain and bowel movement issues my entire life, but it's only recently that I've allowed myself to take them seriously enough to pursue things with a specialist. I have an appointment scheduled next week with a gastroenterologist. Prior to this I've only seen general doctors who have dismissed my pain with literally no testing or recommendations to be tested elsewhere... I've been told it's anxiety, acid reflux, etc, etc. But none of the symptoms match up with my experiences.
I have to use the bathroom (#2) at least 4 times a day, and it's almost always painful and almost always diarrhea. For the past year I've had frequent nausea every time I eat, and often I just cannot eat. I have been logging everything I eat and every time I need to use the restroom, and I haven't found a correlation between my pain and diarrhea and any food in particular. It seems to be EVERY food.
The nausea is horrid and almost worse than the extremely painful diarrhea, because it is unrelenting and constant and while the bathroom episodes are more intense they are over in like 20 minutes and while I'm still a little uncomfortable afterwards it doesn't affect me like the nausea does. It's hard to stay productive and work, and in general I am exhausted all the time.
TBH it is just sapping my will to live and I just really hope I get answers soon, I can't live like this anymore. If I could even find a way to effectively relieve the nausea it would increase my quality of life so much -- thinking about this just makes me want to cry.
At the same time, I am frightened because in a lot of ways it's just easier to think it is just anxiety or something benign and I am worried that it is something worse.
My name is Sam. I'm a 22 year old recent graduate with a BA in literature and I am currently a self-employed artist.
I've been dealing with intense stomach pain and bowel movement issues my entire life, but it's only recently that I've allowed myself to take them seriously enough to pursue things with a specialist. I have an appointment scheduled next week with a gastroenterologist. Prior to this I've only seen general doctors who have dismissed my pain with literally no testing or recommendations to be tested elsewhere... I've been told it's anxiety, acid reflux, etc, etc. But none of the symptoms match up with my experiences.
I have to use the bathroom (#2) at least 4 times a day, and it's almost always painful and almost always diarrhea. For the past year I've had frequent nausea every time I eat, and often I just cannot eat. I have been logging everything I eat and every time I need to use the restroom, and I haven't found a correlation between my pain and diarrhea and any food in particular. It seems to be EVERY food.
The nausea is horrid and almost worse than the extremely painful diarrhea, because it is unrelenting and constant and while the bathroom episodes are more intense they are over in like 20 minutes and while I'm still a little uncomfortable afterwards it doesn't affect me like the nausea does. It's hard to stay productive and work, and in general I am exhausted all the time.
TBH it is just sapping my will to live and I just really hope I get answers soon, I can't live like this anymore. If I could even find a way to effectively relieve the nausea it would increase my quality of life so much -- thinking about this just makes me want to cry.
At the same time, I am frightened because in a lot of ways it's just easier to think it is just anxiety or something benign and I am worried that it is something worse.