Hi,
I'm an 18 year old male who has had chronic constipation for 1 year. A few months after my constipation started, I also started having "UTIs" very frequently, even though I am not sexually active and I maintain good hygiene down there.
After about my 6th "UTI" in a row in just several months, I decided to just stop taking the antibiotics. Just days later the pain went away and the symptoms were gone. Then they came back about a week later.
It was when this happened that I began to suspect that maybe it wasn't an infection, but a kidney stone - or recurring kidney stones. When the chronic constipation started a year ago, I also began to have difficulty peeing. I have to strain sometimes to get it to come out. The pee is really clear, like 99% of the time. It has no color. And when I'm done peeing, at the bottom of the toilet there is always what looks like green "dust". It always sinks to the very bottom.
And about once a week, I have to pass a kidney stone, and its' extremely painful. The weird thing is that I don't get any of the symptoms of kidney stones, like nausea or extreme pain in my flank. The pain only occurs at the tip of my pee-tube when it's finally coming out.
Okay, and that's just the kidney stone part - let me start on the constipation/metabolism parts:
I'm always constipated, I go weeks without a bowel movement. I don't take laxatives anymore as those haven't worked for me, or just give me really bad diarhea and cramps. Plus, I'm still a teen, and I want to grow - diahrea will not allow me to absorb the nutrients that I need.
Let me mention some of my other symptoms/known illnesses
-Extremely skinny, bony, and look emaciated - my ribcase sticks out. I only weigh 108 lbs, and I'm 5'6
-Dark eye circles, even if I get plenty of sleep
-Hashimoto's hypothyroiditis: been on Levothyroxine (synthetic T4) 100mcg for half a year, feel absolutely no difference in my constipation.
My doc started me on Cytomel (synthetic T3) a few days ago. No difference with it yet either, though it may be too soon to tell.
-My apetite is very infrequent. I used to eat every 2-3 hours before my constipation started last year. I've had a very fast metabolism all my life, until this constipation started.
-Bloating/gas, especially when I take fiber supplements (which I have tried and really just make things worse)
-My bones just feel really weak. I frequently have to hold onto things with my hands because my legs don't feel like they can support the rest of my body on their own.
Some notes:
-I always wait 4 hours before eating anything with iron/calcium, and I do wait 1 hour before eating at all
-I exercise regularly, every single day for at least 30 minutes
-I take probiotics and enzymes with EVERY single meal, without fail. It's become ritual for me.
-I don't have any of the other symptoms of hypothyroidism, such as fatigue.
-I eat well, and never eat junk food. My diet consists solely of fruits, vegetables, grains, fish, and meat on some occasions.
Basically I just want to know if hypothyroidism can cause kidney stones, because I'm scared that by focusing solely on treating my thyroid, I've been ignoring possible kidney disease, which I've read can be fatal and cause heart attacks (and I HAVE gotten really bad chest pains recently for apparently no reason)
I just hate how badly my life has turned out... I was such a happy person before my life took a sudden turn for the worse a year ago... I was accepted into an amazing university, and attended for a few months... before dropping out because I just couldn't handle how badly my health was becoming. I truly felt like I was going to die, and wanted to at least be with my family before the moment finally came. But I didn't and still don't want to die!! I've been trying everything imaginable to get better and nothing seems to work. Not even doubling/tripling my dose of levothyroxine worked.
If someone has an answer and can help, please let me know... I want this nightmare to finally end. I want to know what is occurring in my body, so I can fix it, because I've been to over 5 doctors now and none of them can find what's wrong..
Thank you.