Tag: IBS

Bad Prelude to the Fall Season

For the last month, it’s been really bad. I’ve missed two raid nights in a row due to illness, the first two in a really long time. I’ve been fighting with near constant constipation for weeks. Yesterday I spent all day on the toilet with diarrhea. I haven’t talked about my Irritable Bowel Syndrome (with Constipation, making it IBS-C) diagnosis yet largely because it is too embarrassing to talk about bodily functions like that. Still, it is getting so bad that I’m going to have to do research on the subject so I will probably write something to codify what I find out about it in the coming months.

In the meantime I combat the symtoms of IBS-C at the same time as I combat the symptoms of my other chronic illnesses. I’ve had brief bouts of vertigo over the last three weeks, the worst of which started after the last struggle with constipation.

Sunday I woke up dizzy. My head was ringing so loud from tinnitus that I felt like I was under attack. I kept holding my head down trying to escape the noise and the pressure, looking over the tops of my glasses at everything and wondering why it all looked so blurry. I had nausea accompanying the nearly unexperienced session of diarrhea, so yesterday was a fun day. I did get nearly finished playing Horizon: Zero Dawn, at least.

I’ve joked for years with the Wife about wanting to have diarrhea because constipation is so uncomfortable and mine seems to never end, especially in these last few years. At least then my experiences in the bathroom would be different. After my marathon running to and from the bathroom yesterday, I can honestly say that I don’t look forward to a repeat of that experience any time soon.

At 1:39 AM this morning the pressure changed in my head. I no longer felt like my brain was being squeezed between my ears on both sides. For the first time in at least 24 hours, the pressure was off. The tinnitus changed pitch as well. Now I just feel like I’m going to faint.

This chronic illness crap is for the birds. Listen, existence. Pick one condition and stick to that one condition each day, please. I can’t take all the changing of things you are going to punish me with each day. One at a time. Take a number.

I Just Don’t Feel Right

How to describe what happened yesterday? I couldn’t describe it while it was happening to me, so I have little hope of describing what happened now that it is over and I feel normal. At least, as much as any chronic illness sufferer can be said to feel anything approximating normal on any average day. To the extent that normal equates to average, then today is a normal day.

It wasn’t pain. It wasn’t numbness. I just didn’t feel right. I wasn’t hungry, even though I should have been. I wasn’t tired, even though I should have been. I just felt… off. I couldn’t even put my finger on exactly what was off.

The Wife needed me to help her with errands that needed doing, so I shelved my weird non-feeling that I couldn’t describe and went out and sat at the Social Security office to file paperwork while she went out and did the other things on the todo list for yesterday. Then we came straight back to the house were I forced several glasses of water down my throat and then went back to bed and slept for another six hours.

When I woke up it became clear that the Irritable Bowel Syndrome might have been the cause of the entire day’s problems. I’ll spare you, dear reader, on the gory details that lead me to this conclusion. Needless to say, I felt much better after visiting the toilet when I woke up. I’ll need to remember to force fluids the next time I feel off in some weird way that I can’t explain. I do have a bad tendency to eat when I’m thirsty rather than pick up something to drink, a habit that can make constipation worse rather than better.