Hello everyone! So glad I found this forum. I've been suffering from this strange mysterious illness for the past 3 months and wondering if anyone has any ideas, advice, or experience with this. I am completely dumbfounded as to what it might be.
First a little background. I'm a 47 year old male. I've been in pretty good health for most of my life. I work out and am in very good shape for my age. Life long conditions are bipolar II, anxiety, panic, OCD, mild intermittent migraines, and self diagnosed irritable bowel syndrome (gas, bloating, alternating constipation and diarrhea, etc for years) . My anxiety and OCD can get challenging at times but i manage them pretty well. I do not take any medications. I've always had GI issues since my late teens. I've been seen many times by doctors and they never have found anything serious. I've also had this ongoing swallowing issue. It started about
15 years ago. Certain foods sometimes get stuck in the middle of my esophagus when eating. The problem comes and goes and I've been scoped twice by a GI doc and they did not find anything. That is all my background.
Here is the current issue that is perplexing and frustrating me. Late April of 2015 I got a bad cold, very bad runny nose etc. After about
36 hours it started to clear up. Sometime towards the end of the cold, it seemed to morph into flu like symptoms. I had fatigue, nausea, some headaches, dizziness that would come and go, stomach pains, and loose stools. I would have stomach pains randomly or sometimes after eating. This lasted about
5 days then began to clear up. Then the symptoms would come back and move around. But I would alternate for 3 months between days I felt totally fine and then days I’d have the symptoms (mostly nausea, stomach pains, dizziness and loose stools. sometimes it would explode out of me all over the bowl and sometimes just be loose stool.). For the first several weeks, I just thought I had some sort of flu virus that was working its way around my body and I just needed to give it time. But then every-other-day illness persisted for three months and I started to freak out (yes I also suffer from severe heath anxiety, meaning I’m always worried that I have something terminal!). So I went to see my regular doctor a few weeks ago. I told him all my symptoms and he didn’t seem too concerned about
it. He was like, hmmm I don’t think it’s parasites, I don’t think it’s this, I don’t think it’s that. Then he just suggested giving it more time and said if it gets worse or persists he will refer me to a GI doc.
So I went home and the strange “every-other –other- day” illness persisted (felt fine one day then sick the next, feel fine next day, then sick the next, and so on). Then one day after describing symptoms to a good friend he suggested I may be suffering from gluten sensitivity. Bingo ! I thought he may have nailed it. I also suspected for a long time that this may be a problem for me. So I thought, why not give it a shot. I went 100% gluten free overnight. I have now been gluten free for 9 days. After a few days, on the gluten free diet, my symptoms began to improve. No more loose stool. My poops became normal again. My swallowing issue has completely gone away. The nausea subsided.
Then last Friday night I got a migraine. I attributed it to possible withdrawal symptoms from Gluten, because I had been feeling better. It cleared up later the next day and I felt pretty good all week. Then the last few days, I’ve felt the symptoms again. Yesterday, I was nauseous all day, dizzy, and I had a slight headache that lasted all day and evening. I also had 3 bowel movements when I had been having only one a day as normal. Although my poop was normal but I went 3 times! I slept for 10 hours last night and feel better today but still having some very mild symptoms of headache, dizziness and nausea.
Does anyone have any clue what the heck is going on with me? I was thinking if I had something really serious it would not come and go like this. I hope it is nothing serious. But I just can’t figure out if this is all being caused by migraines, GI problems, a superbug, the flu, IBS, food allergy, etc? Since it is affecting so many body areas it make no sense (headaches, , stomach pains, nausea, dizziness) Any insight would be helpful!! Thank you for reading!
Post Edited (romanzander) : 7/25/2015 4:22:46 PM (GMT-6)