Are we talking about generating our own brochure that would go to doctors like the brochure that someone created for us to give to friends/family who don't have/understand IBS? Great idea!Now for my contribution to the cause...In a word, IBS causes uncertainty...getting the diagnosis means WAY more questions than answers.We become uncertain about:1) Whether or not IBS is a real disease.2) Whether or not each of us has IBS. With so many different descriptions of the symptoms, it is often hard to believe that we all have the same thing.3) If not IBS what is it?4) Is it cancer that has gone undiagnosed?5) Is it all in our heads? If so, why?6) Will I ever get better?7) Will I make it through the day/morning/hour etc. without having an embarassing accident?8) What should I try to get better?9) How can anything that's not life-threatening hurt so freakin' much?10) Even if I accept all of the above, how do I cope with my day-to-day activities? How many can I continue to do at all? (Especially work!)11) How do I make my spouse/boss/roommate/teacher/parents/sibs understand what I'm going through when there are usually no outward signs of being "sick?"12) If a treatment such as fiber seems to improve my situation for awhile and then I have a bad flare-up again, does it mean that treatment is useless?Uncertainy can lead to frustration, anger, anxiety, depression, or at times a combination of all those things.Now, how we cope with that...well, here's my take on it...If you ever seek support for being chronically from a book, group, psychologist, what have you...you'll find that they often talk about something they call your "life story." There are many ways of looking at your life story when you've got IBS:1) You could decide that you're basically screwed because you have no control over the situation. and therefore the bad guys won and the story is essentially over. (a classic tragedy)2) You could decide that while you have no control over it, the story isn't over because you're holding-out hope that a hero will come into the picture and save you from this wretched hell. (a classic romance)3) You could decide that if you fight hard enough you might eventually get control over it. (a war movie)4) A totally different approach: You could decide that while IBS is a part of your life story, it is merely a subplot to other things in your life. (a complex drama)5) You could decide that the bad guy in this story in this story may be dominating the scene but his challenging you constantly is making you a better person. (I think of this as a cross between the Die Hard "If-it-don't-kill-ya-it-just-makes-you-stronger" approach and a classic kung fu film.)6) I guess if you're truely nuts you could enjoy the suspense of the the situation and treat it as a science-fiction or mystery flick. (I'm a Trekkie, but this one's no good for me.)7) If you're convinced it's all in your head you could take the Wizard of Oz approach and see if clicking your heels together helps.8) Consider it a comedy and laugh at your troubles.I could go on, but I should get to the point instead...of course we can't control every aspect of our lives and we don't have the answers we need when we feel we need them to our problems, but we can determine how we organize the events in our lives as they unfold before us in our minds. Personally, I prefer to do it like the very best movies do it--like Shawshank Redemption and Pleasantville....in other words, I try to include many different elements in my life story. Shawshank, for example had momments of despair, humor, mystery and even a little of that Die Hard mentality. Pleasantville included sci-fi, humor, complex drama, etc. Those are the great stories that people talk about forever. When I die and my story on Earth is over, I want mine to be the kind of story people talk about because of all of the interesting elements that went into it, the good, the bad, and the ugly.
