IBD first flare up

In 8 June 2010, I went for my church camp in Malaysia with many of my cell group members. The theme was faith and fire. I got diarrhea on the night of day one. And life indeed become a journey of faith and fire for me...

I thought it was food poisoning as I have IBS (Irritable bowel syndrome) that includes lactose intolerance. So my bowel is more sensitive than normal bowel. On the subsequence days in church camp, there was blood in my stool and I was concerned.

I was diagnosed with IBS in 2003. On year 2006, I had serious diarrhea with blood. The specialist did not do stool test. He gave me some IBS medicine and said it can’t be help since I was under stress. I struggled for few months until I was introduced to another specialist in another hospital. The specialist did blood and stool test for me. When he found out that it was caused by parasite, he immediately told me to go to his clinic and gave me a new medicine that kill the parasite. I slowly recovered from the diarrhea. But my health was weak for few years.

I went to see my office doctor when I was back to Singapore. He gave me antibiotic and diarrhea pills. He said the antibiotic would have killed the parasite. Even though I abided to eating food for diarrhea and faithfully take my medicine, my condition did not get better. I was in great abdominal pain. I diarrhea till I lie on the bed and could not get up for hours. He said that was because I have IBS, I just have to let it diarrhea till it stops. As my condition get worse after 2 weeks plus, I decided to change doctor.

This is the second doctor who think IBS will have blood in stool. This is not true. IBS does not cause blood. If there is blood, more testing need to be done.

I went to another doctor, she said if one week my condition still did not get better with her new medicine, she will refer me to a specialist. After one week, as my condition worsen, she referred me to a specialist. I could not wait to see the specialist in few days time, I went to A&E the next morning as the medicine could not stop the great pain and diarrhea with blood.

In my past experience with diarrhea, I learn that we don’t do A&E when we have diarrhea, we should go to our family doctor, GP. The two GPs did not tell me to go A&E even though I had blood in my stool. Actually, with blood in stool for 3-4 days, we should go to A&E. Refer to the link, and go to the section, Abdominal Pain or Indigestion.

In the early morning on the second day in hospital, a young female doctor came with a team of doctors to my ward. She said if the blood was caused by IBS, I will be discharged the next day. The hospital was eager to discharge patients.

With many testing, including blood test, stool test, X-ray on my lung and two colonoscopy, I was diagnosed of IBD (inflammatory bowel disease), which is medically an incurable chronic diseases of the intestinal tract.

I wonder why the medical team did X-ray on my lung when it was my abdomen that was having problem. They explained there were cases of diarrhea with blood that was caused by TB (Tubercles Bacillus).

As frequent X-ray is bad for our health and testing cause money, so always asked the doctors when they do certain test.