Hey again everyone. It's that annoying girl who always has something else wrong with her and writes ridiculously long messages! I am going to heed Nikki's advice and stop the multivitamin and iron supplements immediately. See if that was causing the diarrhea.
Today has been awful. I was horribly nauseous when I woke up and I laid down instead of doing all my morning things.. so now my hair looks like crap and my parrots want to kill me for not playing with them. As if that weren't enough, I went to work with my boyfriend and for the 4 hours I was there I had to go pass stool around 20 times. My poor little butt is now killing me. The only relief was taking those yummy metamucil crackers from the store. I will definatly be making my own as I can see myself going through nearly a box a day.
It's about 93 degrees here today and while it's a lot cooler in his store, I was shivering my butt off. I was REALLY cold! I would step outside to warm up and then be back in and freezing again. My arms and legs felt cold to him but my head felt warm. Temp was 97.0 but I always run low.
I have also been absolutely exhausted for the past few days. I am wide awake right now but only because the cramping and butt pain got so bad that I took my last remaining pain pill (cry). About an hour before he sent me home for a nap I began experiencing lower back pain and flu-like achy symptoms.. but only from my waist down! What the heck! My butt has the flu? Could I have pouchitis?
Could I have brought this on myself by making SO many huge diet changes all at once? I tried to pace myself with starting to eat meat again, took me 2 weeks. I added magnesium, echinacea, Acidophilus, omega3 and Centrum chewable vitamins all on the same day, about 1 1/2 weeks ago. I added the iron supplement about 4 days ago. I have been drinking 1 1/2 - 2 liters of water a day. I used to only drink tea and not much of that so the water is also a big change. As usual, with the diarrhea I have this bladder thing were I have to pee constantly but I hardly pass anything and still feel like I have to go really bad. Pee test checks out normal though. It went away but came back this week. (around the time I started the iron)
I called my surgeon and of course he is on vacation. They said it sounds like a good idea for me to just go on the antibiotics for a week and see what happens. I'm game. I have Acidophilus and yogurt to keep me good. I'm going to call and request Flagyl and Cipro. This is what they gave me when i had the ulcer in my pouch about 2 months ago. I wonder if I could have had this brewing up and it's what caused all my acid problems, if I brought it on with all my changes, or if it's just a wonderful new addition to my everlasting bowel torment.
Stanley the Stoma is starting to look REAL good again.. and If I want the bag back I know I MUST be sick.
Thanks!!

Sarah

Are you sure you don't have a partial obstruction? Take antibiotics for no reason in particular? Sounds like you made alot of changes at one time.
Drink alot of fluids, gatorade, etc and getting on your knees and rocking helps, chew a mylanta gasx, could be that too.
feel better
holly

I agree, adding a bunch of supplements to your regime probably was not a good idea. They probably did not cause pouchitis, but if you were leaning in that direction, they could easily have made things much worse. In particular: magnesium salts are laxative, so those are best taken once you have your gut sorted out and normal; iron can go both ways- constipation or diarrhea, so another potential contributing culprit; acidophillus can cause gas and cramping in some people, so again...; multivitamins are less likely to be the issue, but since they were started all on the same day, who knows?!; the omega-3 is probably the only thing that for sure would have been OK.

Pouchitis can make you feel just like having the flu, so that would explain the chills. But if this does not resolve with the antibiotics, you may want to consider having your thyroid checked.

Jan

Thanks for the replies. I don't think I have any sort of obstruction since everything is coming out so fast and without a problem. I had to have surgery for an obstruction in December and it felt nothing like this.
I REALLY don't want to stop taking the magnesium but I will if you think It's a good idea. I assumed thats what stopped the acid reflux but since I took so many things at once, who knows! I don't want to get the acid symptoms back.
I will stop the iron and multivitamin for a day or two then maybe the acidophillus and see which one resolves the problems. But, since I'm probably going to be on antibiotics, should I stay on the Acidophilus? Maybe just take yogurt instead? (I thought they were nearly the same thing) should I take gas meds? I HAVE had a lot of gas and since I'm so runny, I use the toilet to pass gas just in case
I was taking charcoal for a day to try and battle the diarrhea. It helped but I decided it was probably a bad idea and discontinued it. Perhaps that has something to do with this. I had my best day yet while I was taking the charcoal supplements though. I should have known this would happen the day before I'm supposed to be manning my boyfriends store by myself
Thanks so much you guys!!

Oh Sarah, poor you! Sounds miserable. I had iron infusions while I had my bag, and they lit the fire below a huge abcess that no-one had discovered previously. The doc said iron can really fire up a simmering infection. I didn't know that. So based on that, I'd stay off iron until you're sure there's no infection brewing in your pouch or otherwise. You could try eating live yoghurt instead of taking probiotics if you worry that they might be upsetting your system. It may be an idea to just cut out the supplements until you're ok again, then introduce each one very slowly, one by one. But don't beat yourself up about being too impatient and downing everything all at once. It's only natural, especially when you know others swear by all these different things. A lot of the deep pain I get when I get bad diarreah is (I think) from internal hemorroids that pop up because of all the time I spend on the loo. Hemorroid suppositories help me a lot, and I just make sure I use plenty of cream that numbs and protects the skin. Don't worry - this will get better, even though it's very unpleasant as you're going through it.

Makes sense that the charcoal helped, since it binds with most medications and supplements.

Jan