Belly Issues that are all in my head

[Anonymous]

I had to get some insight into the situation I am experiencing because I feel like I want to throttle people!

For the past 4 days, I have experienced the worst stomach issues of my life. It’s not vomiting, it’s the ‘other kind’. It’s accompanied with intense stomach cramping, and I had a fever during one of the days. I have tried Pepto Bismol and pills and it hasn’t even touched it. The problem has been eclipsed though by the treatment I have received from not only doctors, but my family.

I have had ‘belly issues’ for the better part of four years. I have been awakened from a dead sleep with the most intense cramps you can imagine which leads to me spending hours in the bathroom. My mom died of colon cancer, so I mentioned this issue with my doctor about 3 years ago. At that point, the ‘attacks’ were intermittent, but enough to worry me. My doc, a decent guy, seemed more wrapped up in my ‘mental issues’ (I have bipolar disorder in addition to ADHD) and spent the majority of the visit focusing on that and stress. He wrapped it up by advising me to eat more ‘like a vegetarian’ and bid me good day.

Fast forward to July 4th of this year. My ‘episodes’ had calmed down in number, but increased in intensity. What used to be a couple of hours of agony have now taken me down for days! This past ‘attack’ is the longest and most painful. I contacted a GI but in the meantime went to an Urgent Care because I am pretty scared about what is going on. Again, I am basically asked it if could be ‘attributed to some kind of stress.'( because as we all know, stress can cause fever as well as stomach pain) and since I haven’t traveled abroad, my symptoms were shaken off as viral.I explained how the pain radiated, and how a lot of it was pronounced more on my right side (umm..gall bladder…) I was given a prescription for yet ANOTHER anti diarrheal medication (because the other 2 worked so well) and sent on my way.

At this point, I just don’t feel like I’m taken seriously, and I began to doubt myself. Do people think I’m making this up? I was texting back and forth with my sister, who up to this point has been supportive of me in every way, but she began to lecture me on the ‘medical industry’ and how hard it is for places like E.Rs and Urgent Care facilities because of drug seekers and the like. I understand that my symptoms are ‘vague’, and I also understand that Urgent Care facilities are not E.Rs and are limitied in what they can do, but from check in to check out, I was there for 37 minutes! Even after giving my personal history of the recurrence of symptoms and my family history. I never once mentioned medication. I wanted TESTING if anything. I wasn’t angling for time off from work, in fact, I left the Urgent Care and came right back to the office. I just want HELP for an issue that has been bothering me for years! I felt more like an annoyance than someone who was taken seriously, and then to have my sister heap on the criticism was too much. I spent the remainder of my morning in tears. Nothing gets the focus away from belly pain like blind rage, I can tell you that.

I’m also well versed in the ‘industry’ because I’ve worked in medical for 14 years now. My sister, the one who is so in tune to the problems of medical facilities around the world, she’s an engineer.

The good news is that I will be seeing a G.I doctor at the end of the month and the sick part is that I hope that they find something.

I just wonder, I see so many forums about people who were doubted about ADHD, has anyone had other medical issues ‘poo poo’d’ by people, either because you have a history of being ‘sickly’ or because the symptoms are ‘vague, or even because it could be just ‘in your head’? I feel like unless I begin to expel blood or my bowel ruptures, people honestly believe that I am making this up, and that frustrates me more than anything.

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[Anonymous]

Good that you are getting it checked out! Yeah stress can be tied to irritable bowel syndrome, but what you are describing is more intense than IBS. Have them scan you..scope you..etc. peace of mind= invaluable. I understand your desire to find something. Something can be treated and then symptoms can be relieved. not finding something is much more difficult to treat. A lot of people become upset and in denial about bipolar diagnoses. I was soooooo relieved!!!! to find a treatable reason why I was a walking trainwreck. I was officially diagnosed with ADD and felt pretty relieved to find a treatable reason why I can’t get anything done and spaced out all the time. Maybe I am not the dumbest smart person I know anymore?

Anyway, I hope it goes well and they find something that is easily treatable

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[memzak]

Stephie101-I think this is more common than not. My latest is the incident with the psychiatrist the County health people sent me to. I had already been diagnosed with ADD but since I went in there crying, I had a lot of bad things going on and was struggling with the diagnosis at the time, she automatically diagnosed me with bipolar and gave me a bipolar medication. The medication made me extremely nasty in only 4 days and gave me such a bad headache that I didn’t take anymore. I have had doctors actually yell at me for asking questions. More than one doctor has yelled at me like I was simple or stupid. My parents were doctors, I worked for a veterinarian as a surgical assistant, I took human anatomy and physiology in college so I have a little knowledge. I guess making the link between what I know and what is happening to me is impaired because of the ADD. Now I look everything up on the internet before I go to a doctor.

My mother used to go to a doctor that had her pegged as a hypochondriac. When she started taking me to see him it was ‘like mother like daughter”. He treated my ADD symptoms with thyroid even though my thyroid was in the normal range. Of course, back then, ADD was almost an unknown, especially in teens and young adults. He treated her double heart murmur and other serious medical conditions as “in her head”. If she had gone to a heart doctor instead they probably would have replaced the leaking valves. She is almost 89 and doing very well never having had heart surgery so kudos to her for keeping going anyway.

I am glad you are going to a G.I. He will find out what is wrong. I had an ulcer in my esophagus once that started bleeding and the hospital made sure it had not perforated then referred me to a G.I. I healed up just fine with the medication he gave me. The ulcer was my fault. I was being worked to death at my job and had taken prescription strength ibuprophen with no water because I felt I didn’t have time to stop and get a drink and it got stuck and burned a hole in my esophagus. I guess that’s kind of an ADD thing to do, I don’t know.

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[Anonymous]

Thanks so much! All that I wanted was a path, you know, some tools as to what to do. I got my own referral to a G.I and decided after this last bout that if they tell me that I can only eat “twigs and berries” for the rest of my life then I’m down. I’ll meditate, do yoga, sit in an ashram…I just don’t want to be ‘dismissed’. I know that being bipolar brings it’s own unique set of issues, but everyone else seems more hung up on it than me, and it seems to be the ‘go to answer’ for any and all additional problems that develop in my life. I don’t want a serious issue, and God knows I take ENOUGH meds, I just don’t want a serious issue to be overlooked because people are so focused on ’emotional factors’. My mom NEVER had the traditional symptoms of colon cancer, so by the time it was discovered, she was already at stage 4. I don’t think that what’s going on with me is anywhere near that, but I want to be proactive.

I’m with you on the relief factor. Once I wrapped my head around it and did more research on what was going on with me, my whole world got more clear, but you still battle the stigma that comes with bipolar disorder and ADHD. I can’t get upset without someone wondering if I took my meds, this belly issue, everything tries to put it in a neat little package and say it’s emotional. Again, if I go to the GI and they say they can’t find a thing, then I’ll move on, but for this long, to have this problem…all I know is that at best, it’s frustrating, at worst, devastating.

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[Anonymous]

Memzak I totally understand. I got diagnosed in ’02 with bipolar disorder (after a 2nd and even 3rd opinion) and ADHD 3 years ago, and things for me have been good (knock on wood). When I talked to my primary care doc about my belly issues waaay back in ’08, I am not kidding, we talked about my bipolar disorder for a good 20 minutes. I already SEE a doctor for that. I wanted to know about my belly. I am due for a colonoscopy. My mom was diagnosed at 49, so my sisters and I were told that we needed to start getting scopes at 35. I’m sure that after my consult, I’ll be scheduling for one. Yikes

This experience has made me appreciate the doc I work for even more. She’s a gynecologist who works in Women’s Health. We don’t do pre natal, so we see a pretty wide variety of people. She treats EVERYONE with the same respect, dignity and empathy regardless of how ‘crazy’ they may seem to everyone else. She says that even if 90% of the time, a patient is wrong, 10% of the time they’re right. I’ve had women at our check out desk dissolve into tears as they tell me that my doc is the first person in YEARS who has listened to them and order a course of treatment. They weren’t looking for attention or pain pills, they were looking for answers. We’ve had women with very REAL health issues who had been pushed away because of overbooked docs or unsympathetic physicians.

The ‘god complex’ with docs still exists today and when they encounter someone who actually knows what they are talking about and asks questions, they get defensive. I tell my friends and family all the time to be ‘proactive’ in their healthcare and ask questions, if you don’t get an answer you like, ask someone else. Today kind of showed me why some people don’t ask again. You’re scared to death that you’re going to get shot down.

I also know that an Urgent Care is awesome if you cut your finger open or burnt your hand on your grill, not so hot for anything else, but I’ve been so dehydrated from all of this that yesterday I drank a GALLON of Gatorade and only had to pee once! I went for peace of mind and got anything but!

The day I took my mom to the ER, and she was subsequently found to have a tennis ball sized tumor in her colon, her OWN doctor’s office hadn’t called her back when she called with symptoms of a low grade fever and right upper quadrant pain. She laid on a couch for hours before I corralled her into the car and took her to the hospital. My fear at that point was her gall bladder. If only it had been her gall bladder! After her surgery, her doctor came down to the hospital to personally apologize for the staff not getting her in to be seen. More than likely they would have referred her to have a CT Scan and it wouldn’t change the outcome, but the fact that she wasn’t taken seriously when she called, and this is woman who could have had walking pneumonia and still found a way to vacuum the house, was shocking to me, and insulting to her.

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[Anonymous]

Forgot to mention my little fun experience in an urgent care. I was having GI problems in which I was vomiting all food I ate before 7pm. It was a problem because I was underweight at the time from weight loss from the vomiting. If not vomiting, then I had some serious nausea. I was really scared about it and unfortunately hypomanic at the time as well. So they diagnosed me with hysteria . I went to an actual PCP who tested me for celiac and gave me librax (bentyl + librium)..yeah.. notice the benzo included.. >_<. so it put me to sleep. not cool. I still have no clue what happened. It happened after I worked night shift. Even after I quit working night shift, I had years of problems (although less severe). I am finally able to eat breakfast when I wake up early. I still have trouble taking pills on an empty stomach. i still have no clue what really happened to my GI. maybe an ulcer? I took prilosec for awhile which was somewhat helpful. urg!!!

I had a client with schizophrenia who probably has lung cancer, but they push him in and out and won’t deal with him .

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[memzak]

Stephie101-The thing that made me so mad at the psychiatrist is that I am not bipolar and she could not tell the difference between situational depression and bipolar. I have been misdiagnosed with depression and anxiety disorders most of my life. Talk therapy has not helped because the cause has always been the ADD and the depression and anxiety were always byproducts of the ADD. I had been trying to fit my star shaped peg into the wrong shaped hole and was miserable because of it. As far as “mood” disorders go, I have been in a much better “mood” since I was finally able to accept that ADD is a fact of my life, that I am not lazy, stupid or crazy and I am going to find a way to figure out how to motivate myself without using anger, panic and fear to get moving. This is proving difficult but I am determined.

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[Anonymous]

Sugargremlin, I can see that happening!!! The doc at the urgent care said that he was going to give me the name of a G.I. doc and didn’t even do that, just another Rx. He didn’t even look me in the face. He was more interested in telling me about a couple that came back from the Dominican Republic with stomach issues. I guess if I had lied and said I just got back from Darfur then they would run a battery of tests on me. He mentioned a ‘stool sample’ and then said it was expensive. I have insurance, I’ll do any test you want! If through PROCESS OF ELIMINATION I find out it’s nothing then okay, let’s look at the emotional factors, but I’ve seen and heard of too many people who’s lives were turned inside out because no one listened to them and basically threw meds at them to allieviate the symptoms. I want the symptoms to go away, but I want to get help for the issue permanently. It’s getting to be a quality of life issue because when it hits, I can’t be more than 10 feet from a bathroom. This weekend I woke up at 4 am with this excrutiating pain and stayed up for most of the morning, so of course I slept a lot that day, wasting a chunk of my weekend. If it weren’t for my dogs needing CONSTANT attention, I would have stayed inside.

Memzak I can’t even imagine your frustration. I mean what I feel right now is more righteous indignation, but when you’re dealing with depression and all that comes with it, there is a desperation that cannot be explained. I first sought out help because I thought I was just depressed from losing my mom. It’s great that you kept pushing though and found the correct diagnosis for you. I read so many people’s struggles with getting help.

I’ve done counseling with my seeing my psychiatrist for my bipolar disorder and the ADHD. To be honest, the ADHD was ‘harder’ for me to accept in a way. At that point, I was like “one more thing”, “one more pill”, “are we gonna ‘up’ my visits now”, but I know what you’re saying about acceptance. The only stress I get is when others don’t accept it in me. When the belly issues first started, I discussed with the counselor and also my psychiatrist, and I tried to track what I was eating, what was going on in my life to see if there were any connections to diet or stressors and these ‘attacks’. I found no direct correlations. There has been no rhyme or reason to it at all. I’m sure that worrying about whether worrying is making me sick doesn’t help. Ah the spiral!!!

I’ve said it so many times but I am so grateful for this site. I feel like whatever problem I encounter, there is real support and success stories that are attainable. This morning after talking to my sister, I felt so utterly dejected. I feel a lot better now.

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[Anonymous]

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