Ok, so I'm a twenty year old girl and I'm a student about to start my third year at university. Like everyone else here I also have IBS. For as long as I can remember I've struggled with my stomach, but it has definately got worse as I've got older. At school it was ok most of the time, I'd have the odd attack every month or so, but pretty easy to cope with. I had all these grand dreams about travelling, and having a great job, but now I struggle to get through a single lecture.

I was so excited to go to univeristy, the time of your life! Meet tons of new friends! Total freedom to do what you want, be who you want, really start to live. If only. Instead I find myself feeling alone, detatched and incapable of ever really having fun or letting go, due to the constant biting fear of having an attack when I'm out. I can maybe go 3 or 4 days if I'm very lucky without having an attack, but when I do, I'm completely stuck in the house whilst my flatmates go out and meet up with their friends.

I think I've been reasonably lucky, I have an ok social life and a couple of really good friends, but I still feel isolated. I feel just that bit detached from most of my friends, mainly because I can rarely commit to just doing something or going somewhere on the spot as I have to pre-plan any social outing; the day of which I don't eat, take Immodium and drink enough Peppermint Tea to fill a small lake.

I think some of them find me a little aloof, maybe cold, I wish I didn't have to be this way, but I need to know that wherever we are I can just leave at any moment if my stomach decides to kick off.

Lectures are something else all together, as most people with IBS know, a confined space, trapped in the middle of hundreds of people in silence with no toilet access is not a great place to be. I did my best to get to lectures for a while, but it meant not eating at all and being on pills the whole time; but it just completely depressed me and I had to resort to trying to learn my course out of books.

Living with other people isn't always easy either with just one bathroom, sometimes I can be in there for over an hour, and its pretty obvious whats going on, I've resorted to putting the shower on if I think I'm going to have a bad attack to try to avoid questions.

I just feel so alone, IBS has completely zapped my confidence and self-worth. I know no one else who has this condition and its very difficult for other people to understand exactly how debilitating it is unless they have it themselves. I'm meant to be just starting my life, but I just can't see any light at the end of the tunnel.

By: Greenwood