Well I am a little scared. I am a 46 year old male, generally in good health. I’ve had IBS-D for about 25 years, and I have been pretty fortunate in managing it. As long as I don’t over eat, and I take my fiber supplement (I take Konsyl every night after dinner), I very rarely have a problem.
3 years ago I was having a lot of abdominal pain, so I went to see a gastroenterologist. (In retrospect, I think my pain was stress-related). He did a colonoscopy, and also checked the small intestine (barium test) as well as my stomach. The only thing of significance was that there were about 6-8 polyps in my colon, which is a lot for someone 46. He removed them, they were not cancerous, thankfully.
Yesterday I had another colonoscopy. I was really hoping to wake up to good news and a clean bill of health. Instead, he found 20 small polyps. My heart sank. 16 of these were in the ascending colon. I was still groggy, and I need to have a follow up visit after the biopsies come back, but he said it’s possible I may have to have that part of the colon removed somewhere down the line.
Has anyone else had a problem with polyps like this? I am at the very beginning of researching this. My goal is to find out what changes I can make in my life to hopefully stave off the growth of these things. If anyone can point me in the right direction, I would really appreciate it.