August 2005 Archives

Have had a fairly dramatically bad few days. On Thursday I had a very strange half hour episode of pain and feeling like my stomach might blow up, but then it went away.

Then on Friday I had four hours of pretty bad cramps, had to go to bed to wait for them to wear off.

Saturday and Sunday were OK, then Monday I woke up in pain, went to bathroom after breakfast and then felt better, but then was back in pain in the afternoon.

On Tuesday I was constipated and stomach felt very tight, and then today I'm still blocked up and feeling bluerggh.

So that was my week.

I live in a small flat in a converted house, and you can hear quite a lot of what goes on in the flat upstairs, which is inhabited by a single chap, probably about my age.

For his week, he has had several nights out, had his girlfriend stay overnight a couple of times, talked to his friends numerous times on the phone, and laughed more in an hour than I have in the past five years.

But I deserve this, right? I should be able to cope, life isn't fair, take the lemons that you're given and make lemonade?

Easier said than done though. Why does guy upstairs get such an easy life? What in hell did I do to deserve this anyhow?

Bad day yesterday, but feel OK today. One of the most depressing aspects of IBS, and one of the most insidious dangers to your social life, is its unpredictability.

People say to me "We're going out on Sunday, do you think you'll be feeling OK?"

And I say "If you can just give me a minute to check with my fortune-telling IBS frog I will let you know shortly."

Or, if I am in a particularly bad mood, I say "Well how the hell do you expect me to know that then? Do I have a little diary with the future written in it? Can I predict how I will feel in five days time according to how I feel right now? Or do you think that's a totally unutterably ridiculous idea, in fact?"

But if I could predict the future it would make so many things so much easier. Just the guarantee of a decent stomach for a day would make life much more enjoyable.

Do people talk to you like you have a chronic illness? No, me either. People talk to me like I'm a completely healthy, normal human being. Even people who know that I have had IBS for years and years and years talk to me like there's no problem, like I have hayfever or a mild case of the mumps.

There is a very fine balance between moaning about your symptoms all the time, annoying the hell out of everyone and having no thought to the problems of others, and being entirely silent about your IBS and having to constantly pretend that you are fine.

I don't think I've found the right balance yet. Well, OK, in the internet world I talk about IBS endlessly, but in the real world I hardly ever mention it.

And that, in the end, is probably why people talk to me like I'm fine, even when I'm falling apart. If I'm honest I would like more sympathy, more appreciation of the fact that I'm often in pain, more understanding of the things I have had to give up.

But on the other hand, sometimes I just don't want to talk about the symptoms because then a poor unsuspecting non-sufferer says something like "Oh dear, that's a shame, have you tried not eating potatoes? That worked for my mother-in-law when she had a touch of IBS last weekend." And then I just feel more isolated then ever, and find myself having to explain that some IBS cases are not solved quite so easily.

Even when I've managed to talk about it I still feel like there's a huge gulf between my perception of IBS and other people's. To me it's a mountain, to them it's a molehill. And I don't really now how to bridge that gap.

News today from Michael Mahoney, one of the best-known hypnotherapists in the UK and the man behind the much-praised IBS Audio Program.

He has been working on a new program which is now ready for release. It's called "An Aid to Emotional Recovery after Breast Cancer", and although it is directed at breast cancer patients, Michael has found that IBS sufferers also get a lot out of the program, because it focuses on the emotional impact of a serious illness and things such as relaxation.

The CD is available from Mike's website and can be shipped to any country. One pound from each order will be donated to breast cancer causes in the US and UK.

And you haven't ever checked out the IBS Audio Program it is something I would recommend looking into - although I have not tried it myself I have heard extremely good reviews of it from a number of people who I trust when it comes to these things, and it's one of the few really well researched and tested IBS products out there. Worth a good look.

I think that it's natural for human beings to compare themselves to others. Many of the things that motivate us come from envy - I want a house like that, a wife like that, a bowel like that.

But it often occurs to me that while we often compare ourselves to the people who have more than we do, it is far more of an effort to compare ourselves to people who have less. I've never gone without food for a day in my life, for example, so I'm already better off than millions of people in this world.

But I don't compare myself to them. I compare myself to my friends who don't have to worry about stomach pain all the time, or to the pretty people on telly who seem to have everything. Wish I had their intestines, I think. What I would do with a bowel like that.

Just occasionally though I think about comparing myself to the people who have perfect stomachs but actually have bigger problems than I do. There was a girl on telly the other day who had a skin condition which meant that her feet constantly felt sunburnt. She had to have fans at her desk at work just to try to stop the pain. Her feet would swell up all the time and blister, and she's had it for years and years.

Would that be worse than IBS? Maybe - at least I have whole days and sometimes weeks where I feel fine. And then I read an article about women who were 30 stone overweight and had to have their stomachs stapled and then lost loads of weight and then found out that being slim doesn't really make you happy.

So the next time my intestines are killing me I am going to try saying quietly to myself "Look, Soph, this is all very unfortunate but you don't have feet that feel like they're burning and a staple in your stomach. Buck up, sunshine."

It might just work.