HELP - No bowl movement for 3 days apart from Mucus & Blood

[Luke2709]

Hi there.

I had a colonoscopy last monday and up to the following sat everything was fine.

Sun I had no solid bowl movements apart from the odd bit of slimmy mucus coming out.

Mon I woke with terrible waves of lower abdominal pains/cramps, just above my groin. Everytime I had a cramp (every 10 - 30 mins for 20secs) I felt like I needed to go to the toilet but when I did only mucus came out...clear but slightly pink, slimmy, jellow like mucus. This continued all day and in the evening it got worse and worse. Blood stared to appear in the mucus. Not a lot but enough to worrry me. Last night I got no sleep cause of the waves of cramping and getting up to sit on the toilet, hoping something solid would come out...or at least diarrhea.
I took Buscapan but it did absolutely nothing. Still no solid bowl movement....just muscus, for 2 days.

I'm now into my third day and still the lower pain, mucus and no bowl movement. I don't know what I should do? Should I go back to the hospital? Should I just except this is a symptom of my IBS? I've never had this before.

I was told they only found some hemorrhoids inside.

HELP! The pain is driving me insane!

Thank you
Luke

[FurballsMom]

You can find out if you're sensitive to gluten and dairy by eliminating them from your diet to see if your symptoms improve.  Many with IBS also have Celiac.  I tested negative for the Celiac, but I'm still sensitive to the gluten and the dairy.  I tested negative because I hadn't been eating anything with gluten in it for a long time.  Therefore, no Sprue antibodies.  But, I still must follow the Celiac diet and avoid everything with gluten and dairy.  

Some people are sensitive to rice, but rice may become your new best friend when you eliminate gluten and dairy out of your diet.  At first, it may be very frustrating to find anything that doesn't contain gluten in it, because so much of the American diet revolves around wheat.  The key to avoiding such frustration is to learn to do your own cooking.  There are actually plenty of things to eat that don't contain gluten.  You just have to know where to look.  Shop the perimeter of the store.  Nearly everything in the middle of the store isn't good for anyone anyway, because it's all processed foods, which are terrible for people with IBS in the first place.  All those chemicals and the stipping away of the fiber in the foods is really bad, and processed foods really don't save people any time in the kitchen anyway, so it's really not worth your health to eat all that garbage.  It's expensive, too.  I save a lot of money by avoiding all that processed food and cooking things myself.

Besides rice, the other types of gluten-free grains are:  Amaranth, buckwheat, kasha(toasted buckwheat), quinoa(pronounced keen-wah), and millet.  I've been told to be careful about buying these in bulk, because people will cross contaminate the foods by using the wrong scoops for the foods that they're buying.  In general this is true, but the store I do get my bulk grains in has the gluten-free foods in the gravity containers that don't have scoops.  The woman who works in that section also has these health issues, and she has some say in how the bulk foods section is set up.

Some of us have complicated health issues and can't eat potatoes and apples, even though these are really useful suggestions for people avoiding gluten.  So, knowing what else is out there will prove to be very helpful, too.

[chiqui27]

Hi,

I used to suffered from the same problem and the only way to stop cramps and have a normal bowel movement without blood was when I stopped eating food containing wheat. I didn't eat rice, cookies, bread, anything with wheat, and instead I ate fruits, and vegetables. For example for breakfast I had some fruit and apple juice. During lunch mashed or baked potatoes and again apple juice. At dinner I had potatoes again with carrots or any other vegetable with apple juice again. Apple juice helped a lot!!!
About 7 or 8 days later, everything was fine, and I could not believe it !!!  Finally, I was able to have a normal bowel movement with no blood or mucus or painful cramps.
Remember to drink water, too. I'm sure you will get better in a few days.

[Luke2709]

Thanks Furballsmom, I'll give it a go.
Luke

[FurballsMom]

Try Cascara Sagrada.  The bottle says to take 450 mg (1 caspsule) at night with a full glass of water.  Try this for a couple of nights.  If it's still not enough, you can take up to 900 mg at night, but be very careful as this is a very powerful herb and can cause the opposite problem.  Not to be used for an extended length of time.

Another useful herb is Oregon Grape, which isn't quite as powerful and can be used regularly, unlike the Cascara Sagrada.  Just one capsule each day is enough to pull some fluid into the colon without causing diarrhea.  

Something else that is good to take on a regular basis is chlorella, a type of algae, like spirulina.  I notice when I don't take the chlorella that I really suffer, so I know it has been helping me.

Don't neglect drinking plenty of fluids and don't forget to take your fiber.