Posted 5/31/2010 4:34 PM (GMT 0)
Basic info first. 25 year old female, diagnosed six years ago. 9 months ago 1.5 feet of my terminal illeum was removed. I've been feeling much better but not totally in remission. I'm trying out the SCD but haven't been very compliant due to finals and academic stressors. However, I take my Imuran religiously.
So here's the deal:
Yesterday I had no appetite. I drank a couple sugary beverages to get some calories in me but I just didn't want food, couldn't stomach the idea of it. I ate some baked rhubarb at six pm (previously tolerated well on several occasions) and then eggs, toast and bacon at 2am. Around six am when I went to bed, I was feeling kind of bloated like I might be getting gassy, but didn't take anything for it. Usually gas is started by lactose for me, so since I hadn't had any I didn't take meds and figured it was a fluke.
I woke up at 5:30 this morning to cramping and pain. First it would feel like my bladder was full, then I'd feel pain like I was gassy and bloated, then I would feel pain like I was constipated. This repeated in a very predictable cycle. I went to the bathroom but nothing would come out, not even urine. The pain kept getting worse. I got faint and dizzy. As I tried to lay down on the bathroom floor to recover my balance, I fell and landed badly due to dizziness. The abdominal pain got so bad I went to grab a phone, to call somebody to talk to so I would be distracted, and because I was starting to get scared. I had to crawl to my kitchen since I was so dizzy I couldn't stand up. My extremities were tingling knees and down and shoudlers and down. I noticed I was partially hyperventilating but couldn't really manage deeper breathing. I was also sweating buckets. I made it to the kitchen but was wrong about where my phone was. I couldn't get up, however. If I could have reached my phone I may have called an ambulance, because I couldn't see any end to the pain and have never felt anything like that before.
I haven't ever experienced this sort of pain where I felt pressure to defecate but was unable to do so. I still couldn't get up, but after about twenty minutes on the floor I felt like I might be able to go to the bathroom. Luckily (sort of) there was a rug I had by the door to go get washed, and I ended up having to go to the bathroom there. Not my proudest moment, but I honestly don't think I could have sat up, or if I could have gone to the bathroom sitting up anyhow. My stool however, was very soft. Not runny like diarrhea but barely formed. Not something that it would seem like would cause a ton of pain like some of the hard stools I have had in the past. After passing the first bout, I was able to crawl back to the bathroom and was able to continue there. Afterwards I was shaky and had goosebumps but was still sweating as well.
Aside from the embarrassment of having to go to the bathroom in my kitchen (thank goodness I live alone), there are several things about this incident that are upsetting to me. First, it kind of comes out of the blue. I'd been having normal stools for a while, no constipation and no reason to be "backed up". Second, the pattern of bladder pain, bloated pain, constipation pain was weird. It would come in waves every couple minutes, I'd have a second to rest and then it would start again. It makes me wonder about something like a stricture or fistula that my stool was having to pass around and therefore I was getting different sensations as it traveled my body? It particularly hurt near where my incision site is, and I'm not sure if thats due to scar tissue or just because that's where my Crohn's may be re-emerging? And lastly, I'm more used to chronic aching pain, and this acute pain was really like nothing I've experienced before. I'm also more used to back pain than abdominal pain.
So my questions are: Has anything like this happened to you? Was it unusual? What did it seem to indicate, health-wise? Should I call my doctor? Have you had problems in the past where you cannot defecate sitting up, for whatever reason? And how common is this acute sort of pain? How do you cope with it? I think I'd feel better about this if I heard that its just a kind of Crohn's incident that I've never experienced before, and would be less likely to catastrophize, which I'm trying very hard not to do.