[petersm]

I've been having lower left abdominal pain for a year now. I've been to many doctors, who first suggested ovarian cysts/endometriosis, but have recently suggested IBS. The pain is mostly on the left side, sometimes on the right, with pain radiating down legs and in my lower back. It has gotten substantially worse in the last 3 months. On Friday I woke up in the middle of the night with waves of very intense stomach pain. They lasted about 30 seconds, with the pain beginning mildly and increasing until it was unbearable. Each wave came back after about a minute, and was accompanied by sweating/feeling faint. I was finally able to have a small bowel movement, and the pain went away. My stomach has been extremely sore for the last two days.I should say that I don't have any diarrhea and constipation--just abdominal pain. When I was finally referred to a GI, she said it might be constipation, but I go 1-2 times a day. Does this sound like IBS? I would love your thoughts/ideas.

 

[Kathleen M.]

While some people have a lot of stool consistency or frequency issues pain is often the major symptom of IBS. For some reason people think they should have either severe diarrhea or severe constipation, but any alteration counts as long as it comes with pain or discomfort.There is CFAP (chronic functional abdominal pain) which is all the pain of IBS with completely normal stools and unaltered stool frequency.Pain that goes away after a BM is classic IBS pain and not common in reproductive pain syndromes. It is also common for abdominal pain to set off the vagus nerve which can lead to feeling faint or actually fainting. Some people are more prone to that than others.The pain of CFAP is treated the same way as IBS pain so it really doesn't matter if your GI rolls the two together or not. Most of the non-functional GI problems are typically more likely to cause stool issues than IBS is. There are a range of functional bowel problems and all of them tend to be some but not all of the IBS symptom list.