@Allan_59 It could be UC, though the pain is equal on both sides. I will see if I lay on my right side if the pain also goes away like it did when I laid on my left side.
I’ve had diarrhea on and off, but mostly on, for the past five years. It started when I had COVID for 6.5 months, which may have just been a coincidence. But I think the reason behind my near-daily explosive diarrhea is that I take so much Aleve and Tylenol (1000s of mg per day for the past 14 years nearly non-stop). These medications destroy intestinal walls. When I take extra Aleve or Tylenol, my diarrhea worsens, so I figure they are related. So far my liver and kidney labwork has always been healthy, knock-on-wood. When the time comes that they tell me I can no longer take Aleve (Naproxen) I wouldn’t be able to get out of bed every morning because of the severity of my back, hip, knee, and feet, and pelvic pain, but mostly back - no exaggeration. I know that day is coming and I dread it very much. I’m hoping to make it to age 65 before it gets that bad. Once I can no longer take Aleve, I would likely need to move into a permanent, inpatient, crappy, American institutionalized nursing home for rest of my life - which I’d kill myself first before agreeing to do. My grandma spent the final 20 years of her life living like a prisoner in those places. I refuse to let that happen to me. There’s no way I’m going to put up with that because that’s not life; that is something worse than death. Those places are prisons, including the bad food.
Or, maybe if they tell me I can’t take Aleve any more, mayve then tha will finally be the point when I’ll be slightly more willing to try useless spine surgery. Hopefully by then, some better lumbar spine surgery solutions will have been invented, but I doubt it. As a species, our spines are a reprehensible experiment in pain and dysfunction that becer should have come into existence. There’s no such thing as survival of the fittest. Well, maybe, but we are certainly not the fittest. My cat is my age and more fit than any of us with our back and joint problems.
Fortunately, I am always able to get my diarrhea to stop promptly, within an hour, by drinking a half bottle of liquid Imodium as soon as I get the forewarning of the all too familiar stomach pains. The other name for it in the U.S. is Loperamide Hydrochloride oral solution 1 mg; not sure if you have something like that there. Here it is sold “over-the-counter” without a prescription. The directions say to take 1.5 Tablespoons (22 mL, roughly 0.75 fluid ounces) after each bowel movement, then to keep taking another dose after each following bowel movement. I no longer bother waiting around for diarrhea to ruin my entire day. I simply go straight to drinking half the bottle as soon as I get my first symptom. The diarrhea ends within 30-60 minutes, and I can get on with my day. Fecal incontinence is infinitely worse than urinary incontinence, and my heart truly goes out to folks who experience fecal incontinence more often in public than I do. It usually happens for me when I am alone at home in the mornings so it goes away by the time I have to leave the house, but when it strikes out in public, or at work, it’s really horrible. I have certainly had a few significant fecal incontinence accidents in public in my past.
@Allan_59 I will bring up the possibility of UC to my Urologist tomorrow. How do they test for that? How do they fix that? I am coincidentally 2.75 years overdue for my first ever colonoscopy. Because of my family history of a bit of colon cancer, I have to get the big test and can’t do Cologuard. I’ve made my peace with that. Some of you may recall my post from about six weeks ago where I wrote about my scheduled colonoscopy. It was due to happen not long before I was scheduled for my knee replacement. When I found out that I’d have to stay awake all night alone, I realized I did not have the time nor energy to accomplish that between then and surgery, so I tabled it for 2024. People might say, well, just sleep it off the next day. Take a lot of naps the next day and you’ll be fine by the next morning. But that doesn’t work for me. I’m so horrible of a sleeper that I can’t take naps; i just lay there accomplishing nothing. When I get my colonoscopy it will demolish my energy for an entire week so I need to plan well for that. I reckon I’ll be a zombie!
Yet another medical thing I need to accomplish this year. I really don’t know how or why I keep going on. My survival instinct must be so strong but I don’t know why, because I don’t really think I’m that worthy of a being a survivor. No children, no spouse, totally estranged from my only sibling, very tiny family. The survival instinct must be the Mormon pioneer blood coursing through my veins, though the religion itself does not.
@Kathylp. I googled them. Looks like I’ve had them all done, but not in the past six years. Maybe it’s time for new testing. The symptoms do sound *exactly* like what I’m experiencing, except they don’t include my severe Nocturia, but maybe that’s just something old and there’s something new wrong.
I shared with you Peeps that I recently found out both both of my hips also need to be replaced. I’ve had a lot of extra and unusual, increased back pain in the past few months, which I thought was just from over exertion because I’ve been doing some extra physical labor projects. but my orthopedic surgeon actually says it’s the degradation in my hips. When you entire standing bones system is messed up, it can absolutely affect everything that your bone support, including your bladder and your intestines. Maybe this new bladder pain is somehow related to my new inner hip pain and I’m mistaking it for bladder pain. One way to test that theory is to get cortical steroid injections in my hips to see how much relief they bring in my spine and entire pelvis. I was going to wait until April 1 when my health insurance changed to do that but maybe I’ll have to get it done earlier.
Since the last post I wrote, I have been standing on my feet for about the past hour to see if I could get some bladder pain relief by standing up, in other words, by altering the position of my hips. I have experienced probably a 30% reduction in pain. Weird!
I am so wiped out.
