The Recent Pain
It all started about two weeks ago. I was helping a friend move, and I had received a horrible cramping pain in my stomach. I didn’t make anything of it, and tried to go through my day without thinking about it. As my fiancé and myself were helping him move, I could feel this cramping pain right around my ostomy site. I thought maybe it was just air that needed to be moved around. I started to pull all my tricks out of the book. I went for a brief walk around the block. Walking allows gas to move. I actually laid on the bathroom floor to try to move the air around. Nothing was happening, and I started to get concerned. The pain and discomfort was getting worse, and I really didn’t know what to do.
Figuring out the cause of my pain
So before I talked to anybody about it, I started to try to figure out what was causing the pain. I took out my food journal and started to write down what could have caused it. I immediately thought about new items that I had recently bought at the grocery store. One item that came to mind was the drink powder I put into water to give it flavor. Could the artificial sweetener be causing all this cramping? I went home that night and investigated. I always make sure that I buy drinks and drink powder that do not have artificial sweeteners. Did I make a mistake? When reading over the ingredients, I saw that it did have fructose it in. My fiancé explained the misconception I was having. Fructose is “fruit sugar,” and is different than high fructose corn syrup. High fructose corn syrup is corn syrup that has been chemically modified to contain more fructose (corn naturally contains a small amount of fructose). The human body has trouble breaking down the molecules of the high fructose corn syrup that have been modified. Fructose, however, naturally occurs in fruits and vegetables, and most of us don’t have trouble digesting it. As a result of this conversation with my fiancée, I was able to rule the fructose out as the culprit for my horrible cramps.
We started to do some research; I did the worst thing that you can do and searched the internet. The internet told me things that I did not want to hear including that maybe I had a partial bowel obstruction. I had the symptoms. I was nauseous, had horrible pain, and my bowel had slowed down considerably. One day, I am using the bathroom twenty-one times, but on this day, I am only going to the bathroom three or four times. Something was not right. I just could not wrap my finger around it.
To go or not to go to the hospital?
I was about to go to the hospital, get a scan, and get something for the pain. I then thought about waiting it out. I was back and forth for a few hours. I really did not feel like dealing with the emergency room. I started to look at the positives. I was still hungry, was able to go to the bathroom, and could gas. It couldn’t be that bad. I tried adding more fiber to my diet. I had read that lack of fiber can cause an imbalance in my GI tract. It was worth a shot, right? So, for the next two nights, I placed powdered fiber into a glass and mixed it with water. Sure it was chalky and tasted bad, but I wanted to see if it would work. I did this for a few days and I really started to feel better. Within a few days, I was back to normal. Even as I write this article right now, I still don’t know what caused the horrible pain. It could have been stress. It could have been food that was stuck. I have no idea, but the good thing is that I am feeling better.
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