Back to square one...Rice was NOT a good idea.

Alright, so I gave in and finally did the rice thing for over a day and a half. I figured why not it is far better than starving to death. The rice backfired, it gave me the worst heartburn of my life and needless to say last night was a REALLY rough night again with IBS. I'm incredibly sick today, I actually can't even make it to my University classes this morning. I'm hungry as hell and I can't function, my frustration has hit a new level and I don't know what to do.

I have stuck with plain foods, just rice and tea and I'm still sick as a dog. I feel like I'm getting worse rather than better and I really can't take much more of this. I'm not a barbie, I gotta have food, only problem is that LITERALLY everything I put in my mouth posions my body and makes me sick. My husband is baffled as well, we don't know what to feed me or do. I considered going to a doctor but this is Missouri, I've been here 4 years and I haven't found a decent doctor yet, with or without insurance.

I just don't know what to do. I'm so exhausted, fatigued, hungry and sick all at the same time. Can anyone relate to this or give me some advice on what to do before I go completely crazy?

Amie

so sorry for your misery! That is exactly how mine started six years ago. Nothing I ate agreed and blew right threw in a matter of minutes after eating. I lost 20 lbs and felt like crap all the time. Eventually, things sort of stablized and are not near as bad now. I couldn't tell you what helped, like the previous post, everyone is so individual. Can you drink gatorade? It's not perfect but it's some nutrients and helps with dehydration. I also got BOOST drinks at the store; the high calorie ones. There are several flavors to choose from, and they're usually in the pharmacy area. I think that is the one thing that sustained me through that time; liquid food.

Also, do your instructors know what you're going through? Talk to them and see if there is something they can do to help with make-up work, or going to online classes, etc. I wish you the best.

i am so sorry amie. can you handle broth? the previous suggestions of boost/ensure are a good idea. does your university have a health center? they might be able to help you also, or at least asses if you should go to the ER.
i am so sorry rice did not help you. i know i tried rice cereal (for babies) and that calmed me down a bit.
take care of yourself, and i wish you the best.
--bunny

Aww amie im SO sorry! :( I feel awful about telling you to eat rice and then it made you sicker!! ahh!! Im with the ER idea..at least they can kinda "feed" you through the IV...awh man. I'll pray for you and I hope you get better ASAP!!! I couldnt even imagine going through what you are going through...

your body is probably severely deprived of vitamins and minerals which are needed to keep you healthy.  i know a few people that were in worse shape than you, and turned their health around in a short period of time.  i myself was not in very good health last fall, but i was fortunate enough to find a vitamin and mineral supplement that actually gets into your system without being digested.  I will be more happy to answer any questions you may about the products that i use.  if you are in as bad of shape that i was, you have nothing to lose.

Post Edited By Moderator (7Lil) : 2/6/2006 8:22:52 PM (GMT-7)

Bogieman does have a point about the vitamins, though--a defeciency may be causing some of your pain. I think it's a lack of potassium that can cause leg cramps. Other deficencies can probably cause other problems too. You might want to get checked out to see if you are missing something major. Also, your intestines run on hormones (as does everything in your body, really). You may want to see your GYN and tell him or her what's going on and that you want a full hormone work up to see if you are way off on the hormones that work your intestines (I am only assuming they know what those are and can test for them).

You may want to visit your dean of students and discuss with him your ongoing health problems. My university was very lenient with people in times of crisis and all you needed to do was talk to the dean and he would work with your teachers to make arrangements. The usual thing to do was to either drop some classes (rather than fail, you got an incomplete which didn't affect your GPA) so you can handle the rest of your workload or get extensions and complete the work over the summer. We also had independant studies that we could arrange for ourselves, provided we had a professor sign off on it and we turned our work into the proffessor at the end of the semester. Obviously these didn't count towards our majors or other requirements, but they did meet our electives. Your school's registrar should also know about these alternative options if you don't have a dean of students or can't get an appointment with him quickly enough.

Have you seen an allergist to see if there is anything you can do about your wide range of food allergies? My mother took allergy shots so she wouldn't quit breathing when she got near a cat; I don't know if they have shots for food allergies, but it would be worth asking about. Anything to help you eat and to calm down your guts.

And I know what you mean about the house being messy and making you feel stressed out. Here are some things I recommend (because being stressed just adds to your problems):

www.flylady.com This is a website run by a woman who is like your personal house-cleaning cheerleader (free group, free yahoo e-mails; I suggest the daily digest delivery service). Her major claim to fame is "You can do anything for 15 minutes." She basically tells you how to break your house down into small parts and clean it a little bit at a time so that you make progress without exhausting yourself or giving up on it all together. Her method really helps when you feel so overwhelmed you don't want to start at all.

Next are two books by the same author, Karen Kingston. The first is "Clear Your Clutter with Fung Shui." This book has almost nothing to do with Fung Shui and everything to do with getting over your irrational emotional attachments to junk. I read it when I was in college and over the course of a couple of months, I really unloaded some stuff from my apartment and I was suddenly able to keep it clean and I kept picked up after myself and it was a restful, peaceful place to live (me, the life-long messy person and procrastenator). The second book is "Creating Sacred Space with Fung Shui." This is a Fung Shui book and it's all new age, so if you don't believe in unseen energies or energy flows, auras, geopathic stress or that sort of thing, then you probably should not get it. The clutter book, though, is good for anyone. But the Sacred Space book tells you how, after you clean and declutter, you can do these series of things (including clapping in rooms and ringing bells) that gets out all of the heavy, old energy and puts clean, fresh energy back into the space. I did this to my apartment after I got it cleaned up and while I don't know if it helped or if cleaning it up was enough by itself, but I was happier there my last semester than at any previous time.

This is really stepping off into alternative medicine, but some Eastern physicians might even blame your illness at least partially on the state of your home if it is a stressful place, full of bad energies, etc. Since regular doctors aren't helping you out any, might as well try it. Just costs you the price of the book and a little time (or a lot of time if you need to do some serios cleaning/de-cluttering). From what I have read, even skeptical people can see results, so it's not like you have to wholeheartedly believe and have faith in it to work. If it doesn't work, you won't be any worse off healthwise and if it helps some, well, then that's an improvement to the quality of your life. At the very least we DO know that stress makes IBS worse, so being less stressed at home will surely help a little bit.