Hi Strawberrymilkflump. I'm sorry you went through all that for nothing. They really should have done a full colonoscopy rather than the sigmoid. When there's blood loss people often think that it must be coming from lower in the GI tract when it can be from much higher up than that. I've have bright red bleeding from my terminal ileum and you'd only be able to see just into the opening of that with a colonoscopy. I urge you to talk to your mom or any parental guardian and ask them to request a colonoscopy. Then you can have biopsies taken and be sedated for the procedure because they can be painful.
I recently had a Sitz Marker Study (you swallow a pill that contains tiny rings that light up during an x-ray and have multiple x-rays over the course of a couple days to see where the rings are) done to check on the transit time of my bowels because like you I started having difficulty pushing. Sometimes it even felt like my lower abdominal muscles were simply giving out or were far too tired. I was using the bathroom often too. If I were actually constipated then the Sitz markers would have showed up in the second x-ray I had but they didn't. They left my system the same day I took the pill. When I had the second x-ray the tech told me that I looked very constipated and that the markers should be there and they even questioned whether or not I actually took the pill. I didn't have to do the third x-ray because there wasn't anything there anymore.
For me the problem is actually related to my stricture/narrowing and adhesions from my bowel resection back in 1999 when I was 17. Sometimes I do have partial blockages because of the narrowing created by the scaring from the surgery. I was even hospitalized a few years ago for a few days because it caused a full blockage which caused extreme pain in my abdomen and back. When you have abdominal pain from either inflammation or scaring and even bloating it puts a lot of pressure on your spine not just because of the pressure against it but because your abdominal muscles start to become weaker and your back has to compensate causing it to do more work. Yet as mentioned if you do have some form of IBD then you could be dealing with arthritis which IBD can cause. To check for arthritis in your back you can have an x-ray done. I believe you mentioned that you're seeing your regular doctor soon, maybe they can order a back x-ray for where you have pain and maybe even request a CT scan of your abdomen with contrast since your GI dropped the ball with the last test (ask them for these tests yourself if your parent refuses). I had physical therapy done on my back when I was in high school because of the back pain from active disease and from arthritis. It helped a little.
A diet for a stricture is very similar to a diet for constipation. Eating smaller meals more often and increasing your fluid intake can help keep moving things along and help keep it from being blocked. Since I'm in remission I've increased my fiber which allows my bowels to do the majority of the work with very limited pushing from my abdominal muscles when I do have a bowel movement. If you have active bleeding then a high fiber diet may not be the best thing but eating soft, easy to digest, and more bland foods should help. You may want to look into the
low residue diet which should help with some symptoms at the very least yet you definitely need more testing done to figure out what's really going on. A half assed sigmoid isn't going to cut it unfortunately.
I was diagnosed when I was 9 years old so I definitely understand the humiliation side of these tests. For scopes I've always been sedated to where I don't remember them at all. Only test I was fully awake for was the barium enema with x-ray and I hated that test. Instead of drinking the barium they force it on up there and you have to hold it while they take x-rays. That was to check the colon. A small bowel follow through is when you drink the barium instead. Have you had either of these tests done?
Some doctors go straight for a pill cam if the patient's insurance will allow it. A CT scan with contrast will show a lot as well however you can't get any biopsies this way so it's best to have a colonoscopy done. If everything looks normal then you can get a better story from the biopsies which may show inflammation. With active blood loss though it's doubtful that you were dealing with IBS because it does not cause blood loss and very rarely shows microscopic inflammation (can only be seen from a biopsy). You'll never know for sure without proper testing done. If your parents can't convince your GI to do more testing then you may need to convince them to find you another GI.
