Hi all,
Coming back on here just to vent about what I've been dealing with lately and commiserate with others. I don't have an official IBS diagnosis but my doctor thinks it's a possibility and I do too although my anxiety always wants me to think it's something more sinister or I'm eating something that is contimanted/giving me food poisoning (a huge source of my anxiety)
My latest episode occurred 2 nights ago. I had been having a crazy amount of bloat and a lot of gas in addition to feeling a bit nauseous off and on and wired/anxious/achy and having trouble sleeping. I knew something was definitely off. I managed to fall asleep that night but then woke up in a panic and had a low grade panic attack - heart racing, crying, shaking, feeling a sense of doom, etc. Basically the root of it was I was terrified I ate something contaminated and I was going to have diarrhea/food poisoning. Of course anxiety makes you go to the worst possible scenario and all I saw was myself at the hospital being treated with something scary like botulism or something. I came down from it but still felt buzzy/achy all over my body and had trouble sleeping because of it. I was able to sleep a bit more but still had that buzzy/achy feeling (not pain but just malaise, and feeling uncomfortable if that makes sense). I ended up having 2 BMs that morning - none of it was diarrhea. In fact they were pretty smooth snake-like healthy looking poops lol, but just a lot and in short succession. After that I felt so much better but was still feeling that buzzy/achy/restless feeling and didn't have much of an appetite at all. I also felt super tired and I was mentally just feeling super down and exhausted from not sleeping well. Even though I was so tired I couldn't get to sleep right away. When I finally did I slowly started feeling better as the day went on and managed to eat some GF ramen and later on some oatmeal. That whole rest of the day I didn't feel nauseous, just achy and tired which was relieved by simple rest and a heating pad.
And today I feel pretty much back to normal. I got a pretty good night's sleep and have a normal appetite and energy. It's as if nothing ever happened.
Part of me still thinks, was this some virus from something I ate or something more sinister? But am I really having this many stomach viruses/food poisoning episodes in a year? That seems so bizarre. This recent episode is typical of what I keep experiencing, so I guess it's IBS?? In a way it's actually more frustrating when it's not obvious symptoms like vomiting and diarrhea and a fever because I'm left with, well what was that, what caused it, do I need to throw out all my food and start over? I have some ideas of what it might have been (I've been keeping a food diary - but of course when this happens I had been forgetting to record what I ate lol) but it's so frustrating not knowing for sure :(. This is motivating me to get back on the low FODMAP diet but it's just...exhausting. Food has become a big source of my anxiety and there are some days I just can't prepare anything good and go for easy/convenient meals that may or may not be low FODMAP. Gonna try and get back on track though. Ugh