Hi,I'm 24 years old and weighed 220lbs when I moved to asia last year. I came home in June and weighed 175lbs. Due to a really active lifestyle and healthy eating I lost a lot of weight. I travelled through China, Thailand, Vietnam and Malaysia. In June, while living in China, I had a terrible chest cold and went to see an Aussie Doc at an international health clinic. Dx'd me with bronchitis, gave my azithromycin and and an expectorant. I had some loose stools so I took loperamide to prevent the loose stools. I finished the antibiotic and my chest cleared up, but I was completely constipated. I had never had this problem before. I used herbal teas, whatever laxatives I could find in china, and continued this regime for about 2 months before returning to Canada. I saw a Doc immediately upon my return and he gave me metamucil to get me going. It worked like a charm, but it was still weird. I used to be able to push when I sat on the can. Now I just feel that pressure head for the can, open up and 'bam' that's it. No amount of pushing moves anything else. I stopped the metamucil after 2 weeks and the constipation returned. I felt full and slow, but no other pain or problems. The stools weren't typical of constipation though. They were soft and pretty normal, not dried out at all. Just my bowels wouldn't work for 6 days. I bought some metamucil at the store and continued to use it with great success. But after a month or so i started getting a really bad pain in the upper left quadrant of my stomach right along the ribs. I could push on the ribs along the nerve and it hurt a lot. I went to see my gp. He took blood, did stool tests for O & P, and ordered a colonoscopy and gastroscopy. Blood work showed an increase in unconjucated billi, colon was clear, and gastroscopy showed a slightly inflamed stomach, O & P revealed nothing.Put me on prevacid for the stomach, and redrew blood 3 weeks later. Billi levels were going down, so he was happy with that. No signs of any jaundice at all. The constipation has still continued, and I get pains in my left lower quadrant now and in the centre of my back. Went back to the doc, he put me on 6mg of zelnorm 1x/day, and asked me to increase it after a week to 2x/d. The zelnorm took away some of the pain, but it is still there. My gut feels like there are pins sticking in it, and I'm getting quite frustrated with all of this. Doc still won't say that its IBS-C. What do you guys think?