No idea what's going on!

[kireikatt]

I'm having some currently undiagnosed stomach issues, and my GI doctor is leaning strongly towards crohns as the cause. I'm a 28 year old woman.

My primary symptom is pain! On and off for the last year and a half (currently on, for close to a month), across my stomach in line with my belly button, generally very soon after I eat. Occasionally I get an ache under my ribs on the right hand side. I very rarely have diarrhea, although it does happen. I sometimes have nausea, sometimes with the pain, sometimes without. I also have frequent acid reflux, although that I've been managing to control by not eating certain things. One of the big reasons my doctor seems to be leaning towards crohns is the fact that I'm iron deficient anemic despite not having periods.

So far I've had an ultrasound, an endoscopy, a HIDA scan, and a colonoscopy. They took biopsies for both scopes. So far, all of my results have been completely normal. Next on the list is a capsule endoscopy. I was just curious if my symptoms sound familiar to anyone.

 

[DJW]

Hi and welcome.

I hope you get some answers from this next test. Sending you my support.

 

[kireikatt]

Oh, I'd sort of forgotten about these pains, because they're far less common, but I had another episode tonight...
Severe crampy gas style pains, without the ability to pass gas, and the occasional urgent need to go to the restroom, without anything happening x.x

I also occasionally get periods of dizziness (mostly when I'm doing a lot of bending at work), but I assume that's related to my anemia.

 

[UnXmas]

The tests you've already had would usually have detected Crohn's if you have it. The symptoms you describe are very general (could be caused by a lot of different things), so trying to guess the likeliness of diagnoses based on your symptoms would be very difficult. And the symptoms of Crohn's can vary quite a bit from one person to the next too, particularly the nature of the pains it can cause.

Has your doctor considered the possibility that your anaemia is unrelated to your stomach issues? That might be a question to ask if the capsule endoscopy doesn't get you any further forward. When my doctors ordered a capsule endoscopy for me, they said it doesn't usually show anything that won't have been found with other tests (in my case, I'd recently had an upper endoscopy and MRI of the small intestine - my large intestine was removed years ago so tests regarding that were irrelevant), which made me wonder why they'd bother with the capsule endoscopy at all, and I ended up deciding not to have it as I couldn't see the point! But I was already diagnosed and they were assessing my current disease state, not looking for an initial diagnosis, so the usefulness of the test in your situation may be different.

I know going through tests and waiting for results can be very difficult. I hope you get some answers soon. Having a good doctor is pretty crucial - do you have a good relationship with yours?

 

[kireikatt]

I like my doctor well enough, he seems very committed to figuring out what's going on. His primary suspect seems to be Crohns based on the frequency of my pain and the anemia, although my gallbladder is still on the list despite all of my gallbladder tests being normal. He does have a habit of saying that anemia in someone my age/gender is generally only because of severe periods (I've only had two this year and they've both been very mild), or from bleeding somewhere else, so I really don't think he's considering anything else as the cause for the anemia. I eat plenty of meat and vegetables like spinach, so I doubt it's an issue of not getting enough. I sent my fecal-occult blood test thingy yesterday, so I'm hoping I'll hear back about that in a week or two.
Obviously I'd love for it to be my gallbladder or really anything else, but my doctor really seems to think it's crohns.

 

[kireikatt]

I've also not had any MRI' s or CT scans or anything like that done yet.

edit: I had also totally forgotten that I have been tested and treated for H. pylori, just about a year ago, and have since tested negative with absolutely no improvement of symptoms.