IBS Support Group

Hi, my name is Lauren and I am 19 years old. For the past six years I have been having abdominal pain that would come and go. I went to see an Internist thinking i had a hernia, but that came back negative. Then i went to the Gynecologist thinking it could be a cyst, and of course they found one. The Dr. told me that it didn't have to be removed that it would go away on it's own. The pain really started to affect me in my first semester of college in the fall 2009. I would wake up every morning vomiting and always having to go to the bathroom. Now mind you, i have anxiety and depression and school was an hour away so i did get homesick. As for my second semester at school, I came back home and went to a school that i can commute to in the spring of 2010. I started my classes and about one week in i had to withdraw because the stomach pain was getting worse and i got a very bad flare up with constipation/diarrhea, vomiting and a low grade fever. The flare ups that i get are very debilitating i was in and out of the emergency room getting tons of CT Scans (I have had about seven in the last year) but they never found anything to be wrong except slight inflammation. however my blood work showed an increased white count and a high SED rate. The pain meds i got in the er seemed to help a lot but as soon as i was off of them the pain got intense. I was told then to see a GI DR. The Dr. ordered whats called a Meckels scan to rule out a Meckels Diverticulum. that test surprisingly came back positive. So now it was time to see a surgeon. I saw four different surgeons to help me get this problem resolved and they all said the same thing, that i needed a small bowel resection. i finally found the right surgeon and on February 9 2011 i had my surgery. they did a thorough search of my small bowel and unfortunately for me they didn't find a Meckels, but the scan showed it and all the Drs. saw it. I was in the hospital for recovery from them opening me up. I was able to eat a low fat diet on the second day and was doing fine. I was sore for a very long time and while re-cooperating would get the flare ups that caused me to have the surgery in the first place. A week after the surgery i got a flare up and it was the most excruciating pain i have ever experienced and to top it of had a fever and was vomiting. The next day i was told by my dr. to go to the ER to make sure it had nothing to do with the surgery i had. so of course another CT scan was done but found nothing to be wrong except, again, unexplained inflammation. they told me to see my GI Dr, and he put me on antispasmodics and said that it could be IBS. i found no relief, was still having the flare ups with everything that came along with them, and was more emotional than usual. i was told to stop them cold turkey thinking evrything would be fine but it wasn't. I had an extreme headache, blurred vision, dizziness, involuntary twitching that i had no control over and tingling throughout my whole body. My primary care dr thought it had something to do with one of the medications i was on for my anxiety/depression, and told me to see my psychiatrist and also ordered blood work. the blood work showed that my sodium was high and had very small red blood cells. The next day we went to see my psychiatrist and as soon as I sat down in his chair he took one look at me and said this sounds like a classical case of Crohn's Disease. Ironically he has a background in GI. By the next day all of the side effects stopped. but i was still having the pain. we decided to turn to the GI surgeon who saved my grandmas life when she was having GI problems and he ordered a Barium Swallow test. It was so disgusting. i got the report back from the hospital and they found nothing except the unexplained inflammation. we also got blood work back and again I had a high SED rate. I still haven't heard from the Specialist who ordered the the test but im hoping he can find what the real problem is. I feel helpless.