Does this sound like IBS, Crohn's or Colitis?

Any help here would be greatly appreciated...

I am a 26 year old woman who has been constipated my entire life to the point that I was placed on Milk of Magnesia as a child to ease my anal tearing. As an adult, I am very used to not going to the bathroom often, sometimes once every 2 weeks. I have always had a dull ache in my lower abdomen, most predominately in the right side.

In January, I cut gluten out of my diet in order to lose weight. At that time, I weighed 253 pounds. I began losing weight but became sick and needed 3 rounds of antibiotics shortly after. At the beginning of April, everything changed and I started experiencing severe diarrhea upwards of 10 times a day. At this point, I stopped trying to lose weight but have inevitably kept dropping pounds. I was referred to a GI who put me back on gluten 2 weeks ago. I continue to lose weight and am currently 201 pounds.

The pain I'm experiencing is excruciating and my bloat is not pleasant. As of yesterday, I'm leaking blood from my bottom. When I pass wind, I leave a mist of blood. When I use the washroom, the water in the toilet turns pink. I am used to bleeding from tearing, but there is NO anal pain with this new bleeding. It's just there. The pain I feel right now is on the right side of my belly button. I went to the ER yesterday and my blood tests came back normal. I'm waiting on a date to have a scope performed. My eyes have also been wrecking havoc. They are so dry and painful that I'm becoming quite embarrassed about the amount of blinking I do.

My question to everyone is what you do or use to make the pain and bloating stop? Tylenol and Advil aren't doing anything and I'm at my wits end. I have no idea where to go from here.

Add: My grandmother had Crohn's and died from colon cancer. My cousins have Celiac's.

Post Edited (armstrongek) : 6/27/2014 3:04:56 PM (GMT-6)

Thanks so much for your reply. I'm just having a hard time coping, I guess. I live under my heated blanket right now and that helps. I guess what I'm really wondering is if there is anything that has helped others prevent their bloat, but it sounds like everyone experiences their symptoms differently.

I'll give that a try, thank you so much. :)

I use Prilosec and couldn't live w/o xtrastrength GasX. 2-6 Gasx a day.

armstrongek,
it sounds to me like your problem is gluten.
I'll explain:
Sometimes, when you have a food intolerance, you don't really notice it until you quit eating it for a while (perhaps a couple of weeks). Then, when you start eating it again, it causes major immune reactions, so then you know that the food was always a problem. That's how the elimination diet helps people determine which foods they can't tolerate.

In my case, I quit eating gluten in the early 90's, but not because of the symptoms it created (hayfever, eczema, bloating, etc...) but because I suspected (wrongly) that it was causing my fibromyalgia and CFS. As it turned out my husband was poisoning me... but anyway... quitting gluten resolved all my autoimmune problems, and leaving the psychopath 15 years later resolved the fibromyalgia and CFS.

That's when I got careless and started eating gluten again. All the old symptoms came back, along with a new symptom: rectal bleeding similar to what you describe.

Going gluten free is not a simple matter. It's easy to overlook hidden gluten. It's possible that you went GF long enough for your immune system to reset and then you overlooked something. For example, soy sauce and teriyaki sauce have gluten in them. Lots of fillers and thickeners are made with wheat. Meat marinades are notorious for hidden gluten. When I was in the hospital, they gave me tarter sauce and said it was GF. I called the 800 number on the package and discovered that in fact, it had gluten in it. Natural flavors are often made with gluten. The list is exhaustive.

To make matters worse, once you start the rectal bleeding, I'm not sure that quitting gluten will resolve the issue on it's own. The problem for me, was that I had caused so much damage already that all my old intolerances came back. I couldn't eat cheese or spicy foods, for example. 2 year of rectal bleeding while eating gluten and then 2 more years of rectal bleeding while NOT eating gluten. Then I ended up in the hospital. Now I've been officially diagnosed with UC.