Posted 5/19/2010 9:12 PM (GMT 0)
Hi, I'm from Texas but living in the UK now. Lately i've been having a problem with my bm's and it started out as seeing mucus and some bright red blood. It really freaked me out so I went to a doctor and he told me that it is probably proctitis but he was a little concerned because my dad had colon cancer and he is fine now but my grandfather (his dad) died from it. Both my dad and my grandpa had/have pretty bad diets although my dad went through periods where his diet was excellent and he was very active. My grandpa had a crappy diet his whole life and even when the doctor told him to eat more fiber, just a bowl of carrots a day he wouldn't do it because it didn't taste good.
So anyway, the doctor wanted me to see a gi doctor and he said that there wasn't anything alarming but to make sure, he wanted me to have a colonoscopy, but i'm only 27 and a woman and a vegan. I didn't want to do it because I was under the impression that i'd have the half colonoscopy and it would be done without going to a hospital or anything, but it wasn't. The gi doctor did the exact same exam and asked the same questions as the first doctor did, it was £120 to have the exact same thing done and nothing else. It made me a little suspicious because in America its kind of known for doctors to give tests that aren't really needed, so I didn't have the colonoscopy. The doctor that I saw the first time said that he was surprised that the gi doctor wanted me to have the full colonoscopy at my age and without any other indications of anything serious. He told me to wait a few months and if it doesn't go away then I can have it and even then its probably nothing.
But about a month ago I got a uti and along with the bleeding in my urine and the really horrible pain, I also got diarrhea and it happened at the same time. I'd go to try and urinate and after the horrible pain, I felt a really bad urge to also make a bm. This happened every time for the first 3 or 4 days and after I started taking the antibotics it went away but when I took the antibiotics in the mornings i'd have to use the bathroom right after and my stomach would hurt so much before I took it that it actually woke me up the mornings. From that, I got anxiety from knowing what was going to happened that I woke up at least 2 hours before I took the medicine with the stomach ache. I told the doctors this and they said that I just had a stomach bug and that it would go away. A week later it was still happening, like clockwork I woke up at 6am with a stomach pain and then I would use the bathroom and its throughout this time my bm have never been normal. Its always mushy, the last 2 days its just been diarrhea and I have no idea what to do. I was taking probiotics and that helped so much and the pain was calming down in the mornings and then last week I didn't make a bm at all and I felt uncomfortable all day so I took so flaxseed and a turmeric pill and the next day it the bm was completely normal but I went out for the day and while I was walking around I had really bad gas and something felt like it was coming out. So I checked, I was sure that it was diarrhea but it was just mucus and my right side was crampy. Since then, my stomach hurts like it did this whole time, plus after I eat. I've started waking up at 5am now after getting back to waking up around 7:30 and I can't get back to sleep because my stomach is hurting so much. It feels like menstrual pain, and nothing helps really. I tried drinking peppermint tea, and ginger tea and it doesn't help. I don't think that the stress that i've been under has really helped matters any, I was so upset all this week that I thought I could have cancer. I couldn't stop crying and on the antibiotics I was just insane, it made the hallucinate and at some point I thought I was dying or something. It was so bad, this whole thing has been so bad and i'm a very panicky person so I really don't know what could be causing this. Has anyone ever gone through something so traumatic with antibiotics before or uti's? I'm seeing a gp tomorrow and i'm having the colonoscopy on the 3rd of June, i'm more worried about the ibs than anything because I really hope that the antibiotics triggered it or the uti did. I really don't want to wake up at 5am for the rest of my life or have my bm's not be normal. Can something like this go away if it was caused by stress? I talked to my mom and she is a vegetarian and also anemic like me and takes iron vitamins and so do I. Sometimes she has to stop taking them because it makes her stomach hurt, I never had a problem before but could this be a factor? I also take b-12, 1000 mg and the iron is 20mg. I'm so nervous all the time and the closer it gets to bedtime, the more worried I feel. Lately i've tried different herbal things hoping that it would make me normal but so far its even worse and smells really bad. *sigh*