This is the last of the woes.. I promise!

Ok, this is the last part of the epic tale of my bowels.

After the colonoscopy and the discovery of my tortuous colon, I intermittently ate a gluten-free diet. I would do it for a week and then eat bread, etc. The Miralax seemed to be working and I figured I was in the clear. Then a few days before my graduate program began I got really sick. The symptoms looked a little bit like the stomach flu, but I had some additional symptoms such as uncontrollable shaking and really achy joints. I knew what I had and it wasn’t the flu. When I spent the summer in Tanzania I contracted a relapsing strand of malaria and I was having a relapse. I was just hoping it didn’t land me in the hospital like it did the last time. I suffered through it for a day and then it let up. I still felt awful, but a functioning kind of awful. I went to my classes and just tried to make it to the weekend. Come Friday I had a lot of pain in my side and in my back, combined with diarrhea (which is a rarity for me) and I was still vomiting every time I ate. I went to the doctor and she said I may have pulled a muscle and she gave me muscle relaxers and told me if the pain got worse to go to the ER. By Monday the pain was intolerable. I should mention that the pain was not in my left side like it usually was; it was in my right side.

That evening I spent 7.5 hours in the ER before I was even seen (they were packed with standing room only). Finally they took me back and put me on IV fluids, gave me morphine and took an X-ray. The morphine didn’t touch my pain and the X-ray revealed nothing. Then they did a cat scan. A day passed by at this point. Finally they came and told me that I had a case of colitis and that it is caused by 1 of 3 things… a parasite, a bacteria or an auto-immune response. The doctor said colitis is very painful and gave me Percocet (which also didn’t work, I hope to never have colitis again). He also put me on an anti-biotic in case it was bacteria and an anti-protozoa in case it was a parasite.

When I returned home I began thinking about what it could be that caused colitis. I knew it wasn’t something I ate because I had shared all meals consumed that weekend with 4 other people and no one else was sick. Then I thought about it and I consumed a ton of wheat and gluten when I was sick the week before the colitis incident.  I ate toast, crackers, pasta, cereal, etc. Wheat and gluten was I all ate the week leading up to the ER visit! UREKA! It’s wheat and gluten!

I stopped eating wheat and gluten about 3 weeks ago and since then, I haven’t had constipation or diarrhea, I haven’t vomited, I haven’t taken gas-x once because I haven’t been bloated, I have only had one headache and I have lost 8 pounds! I am so happy to finally know what is wrong with me. Now I am left to figure out how to be a gluten-free vegan. It is really difficult.

Continuation of woes...

Ok, I promise to get to the good stuff such as recipes, suggestions, trials and errors, product reviews, etc. I just want to finish painting the picture for you of where I am coming from and where I have been.
I left off at deciding to become vegan. Of course there is more to it, but for the sake of this blog I am sticking to brevity. Anyway, the headaches didn’t really change with the elimination of dairy, but the stomach problems seemed to lessen for a little while. Oh yeah, I also had sinus problems that my doctor felt may be attributed to dairy, they didn’t change either. All that being said, I had read enough about veganism at that point that there was no way I was going to start eating animals again even if the vegan diet didn’t help my stomach or head.

So, the IBS-C continued and sometimes it was worse than others, but it progressively got worse. Eventually (about 2 years into the vegan diet), I began to experience chronic, intense bloating. I don’t mean feeling a little stuffed, I mean feeling and looking 100 months pregnant! It hurt so badly and I often felt like I may literally explode. I took gas-x on a regular basis. *Please note that I also tried various herbal teas, aloe juice and a daily regimen of pro-biotics (which I still take). At this point, I accepted that my stomach would behave this way and there was nothing I could do to stop it.

Last year I reached a point where I was over it. I had been dealing with doubled over pain in my belly for 8 years and I just couldn’t take it anymore. My first stop was at an allergist’s office. He tested me for everything under the sun; food, trees, dust, mold, grasses, animals, etc. Surprisingly enough the only thing I am allergic to is dust, dust mites (YES! No more house cleaning for me! LOL), and cats and dogs. The latter is sad because I have a cat and want a dog in the future. *The cat still lives with me; I tolerate my sinus issues because I could/would never get rid of her. Anyway, the allergist suggested that I could still be intolerant to certain food, I’m just not allergic to them. He said I should try a gluten-free diet. So I did, for 30 days and nothing happened.

I spent the next year, once again, accepting my bowels for who they are. In April of this year, I moved back to Columbus (I had moved away for my job) and the first week back I had a big issue. There was a pain in my left side that had never felt this intense. There was also a large lump, like the size of a grapefruit that could be felt if you pushed around the area to the left of my bellybutton. I figured it was because I had been eating pretty poorly due to the move and having everything packed up. I was eating a lot of bread and fries and things I could access at restaurants that were vegan, but that are still awful for you. I had no choice because for 2 weeks I was living between 2 houses in 2 different cities. Anyway, the pain got intense enough and I hadn’t had a bowel movement in 2 weeks and I ended up in the ER. I figured I had a bowel obstruction and the doctors did too. They took X-Rays and came back and told me I major impaction and it need to come out or I was going to perforate my intestines. They gave me all sorts of unpleasant things to drink to get it moving and sent me to a GI doctor. Long story longer, my bowels finally moved and the doctor I saw told me he needed to do a colonoscopy to rule out cancer and other lovely things.

I had the colonoscopy a week later and it revealed that the health of my bowel tissues was great! However, due to chronic constipation over the years I now have what is called a Tortuous Colon. This is when your colon is stretched out so much that it stays stretched out. Sort of like when someone gains weight and their skin stretches, and then they lose weight but they still have the skin. My intestines are forever changed. There is approximately one extra foot of large bowel on my left side, which is why it always feels like a mass is in that area.

The doctor told me I will need to take Miralax for the rest of my life to keep things moving. If things stop moving, the consequence will result in the extremely risky surgery of bowel re-sectioning. NO THANKS! So, I took the Miralax like a good girl and thing seemed fine. For a while at least. In addition, he tested my blood for Celiacs Disease (an auto-immune response to gluten) and it came back negative. He said that didn’t mean I don’t have it and that I should try a gluten-free diet again.