[shalsays]

HiI have alternating ibs. But these past three weeks, I have had the worst constipation. Usually I only have one bout of it and then it goes back to diarrhea or actually normal bowel movements. But the first week I was constipated for a week and then had very bad diarrhea that weekend. The next week I was constipated for the whole week and had diarrhea again on Sunday. The next week I was constipated till Thursday and I had a somewhat small bowel movement, and I've been constipated since. So it's been 8 days since I had a bowel movement, and it freaks me out truthfully. I don't know what to do. I've tried to manually remove some, but there's nothing up there. I'm sure I probably need to take a laxative or something, I just don't want to. Is there any really gentle laxatives that don't cause tons of pain? Has anyone tried just drink apple juice or maybe prune? I really don't want to result to laxatives. I've never had to take them before and I really don't want to start. Or should I just try to wait it out a little bit? I'm not in any pain really, occasionally I feel like I got but I can't and that's that. I would appreciate any advice, sorry this is soo long

 

[BQ]

I would get some Miralax or something in you to get things moving. And taking it this one time doesn't mean you will have to take it ALL the time if you use it now to get a week's worth of stool out of you. But I think you need to use SOMEthing osmotic now after this long. If you haven't tried prune juice.. of course try that first. But if this long of a bout of constipation becomes your new bowel routine... I think you need to be taking at least a stool softener on a daily basis or you could get impacted.Try either the prune juice or go for a gentle laxative like Miralax etc.. right now and see how it goes. AFter you go though....use a stool softener with NO laxative in it daily and see how that works.