Hello,
This is my first post here. I've looked around a little bit, but I'd like to give my short background, and maybe someone here can shed a little light on a similar situation, or a suggestion... Maybe :)
I'm 24, Non-smoker(never have been), Don't do drugs, rarely drink. My girlfriend is a raw food/vegan "healthy" food type person, but will now eat chicken, and pork occasionally. I used to be very "Meat, corn and potatoes with a side salad" kind of an eater, but since I've been dating her (about two years), my tastes and food habits have turned to more veggies and fruits, but I still love me a steak and potato meal every once in a while.
(note, I use the word stomach here loosely. I'm not sure what causes the problems I'm having, but it's definitely in my gut somewhere )
I'm not sure when my stomach issues started exactly. Lets say they started in 2005 or early 2006. Started getting intense stomach cramps(as in make me tear up). These cramps would be off an on for maybe an hour, with time between them somewhere in the range of 5-10 minutes. After about a half hour to an hour of these followed by almost explosive, liquid diarrhea, followed by lots of wiping and cleaning up, and sitting on the toilet for another 45 min or so. Had a colonoscopy, tried different medicines including bentyl, and lomotil, and immodium. None of these worked for the cramping, and honestly, I don't remember what my BMs were like when this wasn't happening. The doctors pronounced it IBS, and have since resorted to "hey take this drug!" Which i'm tired of.
This petered off somewhere in the last couple of years. The last time I had a cramp/Diarrhea attack was more than two years ago. since then, my bowel movements have been very... loose, but not liquid. On the bristol scale, they are a Type 6: "Fluffy pieces with ragged edges, a mushy stool" They typically included a fairly prominent sense of urgency, and were very very messy to clean up. It wouldn't be abnormal for me to spend more than five minutes cleaning up, and at home, I kept a box of baby wipes to help along the process. At this time, I'd also had a very itchy anus. Not sure the case of that part either, but I could attribute it to not being able to get fully clean, and therefore irritating the tissues around the opening. This type of stool was my every day, twice a day exorcise. Although every once in a while, I had a stool that I didn't have to wipe more than once, and was very firm, and not "slimy/sticky" on the outside; in other words, it came out clean.
This was the case until a few weeks ago, when I had my wisdom teeth pulled (all four at once.. got dry socket, still hurts... story for another day). I was awake during the removal, and on Nitros-oxide (Lauging gas). Afterwards, he gave me a script for Tylenol 3 W/Codeine, and 800mg of Motrin. I took all of these at the proper times throughout my mouth recovery. Interestingly enough, IMMEDIATELY after the operation, my stool was coming out clean. Every time, for about a week and a half, which was 4-5 bms (note, My normal before this was 2bms/day). In the past day or so, my bms have been slowly going back to being messier and messier, and much more frequent. Seems to be trending back to how it was before the operation.
The thing is, that I would much rather have the clean stools than the messy ones (duh, right?) but I'm not sure what could have caused them. So I'm throwing this out to the community and want to see what comes back.
Does anyone have any suggestions or comments to this? Why would this have happened so abruptly? I'm very interested in joining the navy, but there's no way in hell that I would be able to make it INTO the navy, much less through "boot camp".
I realize this is a long post, and If you have made it all the way through it, I appreciate your time!
Thank you,
Graelb.