Hey guys, sorry I've been quiet for the last few days
Rose, I'm glad you're going back to the doctor's today! I hope they can offer some more insight into this whole thing. The fact they found inflammation in the rectum will probably help a lot in actually getting you a diagnosis of some sort; at the very least, it gives you justification to ask more questions specifically about inflammation and what that indicates, etc. Do you know what kind of inflammation is was? Active or chronic...?
So two days ago, on Wednesday night, my mom went to my doctor at home. They phoned me on Skype and that allowed me to "be there" without actually being there! That was actually pretty neat
Haha. Anyway, first of all, my doctor is absolutely awesome and I love her. I'm lucky to have a doctor that is actually willing to work with the patient and listen to me - let alone "seeing" me when I'm half-way across the world!
As far as the actual appointment itself, basically what it amounted to was her being quite adamant that it's IBS. Obviously the limitations in conducting an appt over the phone are many, which we both are well aware of, so while it wasn't much more than just her initial opinions, it at least gave my mom and I some comfort in knowing that it's not something so urgent that it can't wait until I get home to take care of. She would have prescribed me Bentyl, she said, but of course I'm not there to get it from her. They [my dr and my mom] thought about sending it to me in the mail but I told them there's no point since it probably won't get her in time before I go back home myself. I do think my doctor was off on quite a bit of the things she said, however it is quite natural considering she is not a GI specialist and so this is understandable. She also was, on the other hand, quite knowledgeable about some other aspects of GI issues which were interesting -
For example, did you guys know that TUMS can help diarrhea? She also advised me that I can try taking aspirin to see if that helps; the reason she suggested that is because some of the meds used for IBD (sulfasalazine, I think, is one) are derivatives of aspirin, which is an anti-inflammatory in and of itself. That was cool to find out!
But yes, she sounded so sure of her diagnosis of IBS *eye roll*. But I'm rolling my eyes in a loving way - part of that is just her character >_< She's really great, though.
I did forget to mention that it does sometimes wake me up at night and also that when I have diarrhea, it's not necessarily liquid and sometimes it's even formed - it's just that the frequency is unbelievable. Usually it's lower-volume, high frequency. I do get loose stools often enough, and sometimes more liquidy, and it's not always low volume. But that's probably what i notice most, at least during this last flare.
When we finished up she told me to come see her when I come back home so we can do a proper check up, and she will look at EVERYTHING that is going on, including also checking up on my thyroid and whatnot. She said she will hold back her other patients half an hour if she needs just to focus on me so that I can tell her about everything and we can go through it together. I told you she's wonderful, right?!
She said that if we need to after that, she'll refer me to a GI and they can do a flex. sig. after which they may decide to do a colonoscopy if they feel it's necessary. I personally won't mind doing another colonoscopy but I do intend to talk with the GI about other testing to make sure he or she is aware that, if the colonoscopy comes up clean, I will want to do an upper endoscopy, a SBFT, and/or the pill cam to make sure we don't miss anything. I might also ask for bloods, but I might be able to do that at my GP beforehand when I go see her. Anyway, I'm not at the bridge yet, so I'll cross that when I get to it. Right now I'm just sticking to the IBS diagnosis, if only to give me a reason to not worry about it so much, while keeping track of things until I go see her in June. And then, we'll take it from there.
When I was younger, I had some bloods come back with high antibodies, p-ANCA for sure and maybe there was something more. Anyway, we didn't think much of it at the time since there was not yet anything major going on. However, in light of the GI problems I do have now, it's something I need to remember to bring up with Dr. H (my GP) when I go see her next month. p-ANCA can indicate IBD (I think it is fairly specific for UC, but I don't remember), especially when measured with ACSA. I don't remember if they ran ACSA since it was really several years ago, but I think I'm going to ask my mom if she can find those test and send me a copy so that I can take a look at them and check. Although, I'm kind of thinking it's going to be a bit harder to find seeing as they were taken a while ago! Lol.
I'm feeling somewhat better today. I haven't had a lot of pain, which is so nice! I'm pretty gassy and I am going to the bathroom too often still, but it really is much less worse than it has been for the last couple of weeks. I think the extra gassiness is from yesterday. Dr H told me to increase my fiber (traditional IBS solutions, I know) and even though I told her it makes it worse and feels better when I don't eat at all, she said it'll get better before it gets worse. I figured I may as well give it a try anyway. I overdid it though yesterday for sure haha. It hurt, and it sucked, and I was up all night going to the bathroom. My poor bum was ON FIRE and that really kills because you HAVE to wipe, but it's pure agony when that happens. I finally got some sleep when it calmed down after a while and since today was a holiday I was able to sleep in and make up for some missed sleep. My bum isn't burning as much today and seriously it was so bad that I'm grateful enough just not to have THAT to deal with today! I hope that I keep feeling like I've been today because it's been one of the better days. I'm starting to get the lower abdominal pains now, they've been kind of building for the last few hours, but they're faint enough still that I can brush them off just fine. It's Victory Day here today so I went out in the morning to the parade and had a lot of fun, it was very nice!
Hope you guys are all doing well today, too. I really just hope we all get answers soon...
I have to say, though, I think I will be ready to accept that I have IBS if after checking everything I really find that there is nothing to indicate it's something more. Worst case it's not IBS and so I don't treat what it really is and one day I end up in the ER with a blockage or something leaving me half-dead. At least I'll get a diagnosis then!
Kidding...sort of!
