The Chicken or the Egg?

It probably doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that the past three years have been complete torture for Colleen - especially on a physical level, but also on an emotional level.     If you have a chronic illness, you have probably dealt with the emotional side of the spectrum.    Perhaps at one time, you were able to do whatever you wanted without the fear of passing out, throwing up, or becoming so overcome with pain that you end up in bed in a fetal position.     When an illness hits you as hard as this one has hit Colleen, you will (not may - WILL!) forget exactly what it is like to be healthy.   Sickness becomes your new normal, and trying to get out of that phase is extremely difficult - some would say impossible.    I dealt with it when I went through my own illness.  It became a situation where I knew I was going to nearly pass out when I walked through a store.   I knew I wouldn't be able to walk my dogs more than a block without feeling dizzy.   The biggest one is that I most definitely knew I wouldn't be able to drive to see family and friends without experiencing at least one incident where I felt as if I was passing out at the wheel (which did happen once).  Once you start to accept that as part of your life, you don't even really think about how it was before you got sick - it feels like a lifetime ago.  In some ways it feels like you were never healthy in the first place.

Colleen went to see her GI doctor today.  A local woman probably no older (and perhaps even younger) than Colleen who has the ability to be compassionate and relatable while also being direct and honest.   If you have ever gone to a doctor who runs a million tests that "proves" to them you have nothing wrong with you and comes to the conclusion that everything is in your brain, that is not a doctor worth keeping.  The difference with this doctor is that she doesn't just say "It is in your head - now go away".  Rather, she explains how our systems work within our body - and how emotions, stress, and anxiety can cause our systems to go haywire.  This does not mean what you experience is all in your head - what it does mean is that your brain is working on so much overdrive that it makes your real symptoms even more unmanageable.

So, what does all of this have to do with the chicken and the egg?  As she explained today, there isn't an answer to the simple question:  Is my mind causing my symptoms (or making them worse) OR is my illness causing my mind to explode with fear, anxiety, and panic attacks?    When I read that question, I come to my own conclusions with my own answer.  Simply put, it doesn't really matter which comes first - because the bottom line is that you end up with a brain that is working at a speed of a million miles per hour while your body is in constant pain that you simply cannot get away from.    If you have constant stomach pain, where does the feeling of "pain" come from?  Your brain, of course.  That is how we feel pain - when we bang our knee against a wooden table, we typically do not feel the sensation of pain in that moment - it takes a millisecond or two for your brain to process what just happened and give you the feeling of intense pain. 

The GI doctor also explained what Colleen is going through this way:   Our human body is constantly doing things that we cannot feel.   The typical healthy person cannot feel it as food is going through their systems.  We can't feel the blood flowing through our bodies - we don't sit down and feel our heart beating, etc.  But for people with a condition like Colleen has, these sensations are actually FELT and magnified to an extreme.  In my mind, it is kind of like going through surgery without being knocked out first - if are having major knee surgery but the doctor decides not to put you to sleep first, you are going to feel everything that is going on (thinking about that I am sure makes you feel scared).   That is how someone with Colleen's condition can actually feel - her stomach/digestive system/body/brain/whatever is not hiding all of the stuff that is going on inside of her.   Hence, she gets sensations of "sloshy" liquids in her stomach, or intense pains throughout her body.  It is a vicious, unrelenting cycle that is very hard to get out of.    Simply shutting off your brain doesn't fix it, because you have a REAL PHYSICAL CONDITION (again, don't let ANY DOCTOR convince you otherwise!).  Simply shutting off whatever the disease is you have is also not likely going to make you feel 100% - because your brain has not yet been shut off as well.   So, you become "cured", but your brain simply won't accept it.   As I stated many times, I have been there, done that.  After my illness pretty much left my body, I still went months where I had trouble driving.  There was nothing really wrong with me at that point, but the incident where I passed out at the wheel when I was legitimately sick was still there - and  my brain would not let go.  I can't even really tell you when my brain decided to let it go and let me drive normally again.   

As for today's visit, for now we have to deal with a new diagnosis:   Since everything has been essentially ruled out, Colleen may have a bad form of IBS, which is something you can look up online.   The first thing you may thing when you see that is "IBS!  I've heard of that - thank goodness it is *only* that!"  Well, yes and no - yes, thank goodness, because IBS is not typically a disease that kills you.   By the same token, it also has no known cure - only treatments, a few of which Colleen is starting today to see if it helps her symptoms at all.  As with everything else, she isn't going to feel better after one pill - we just have to hope and pray that the treatment over the course of several weeks gives her relief and makes her feel better and herself again.    For those who are wondering "Do I have IBS?  How did the doctor come to that conclusion?", the answer is simply this:   IBS is an exclusion diagnosis.  A good doctor (which this woman is) will NOT diagnose a patient with IBS unless every other reasonable condition has been ruled out through testing, observation, therapies, etc.

Does this all mean that Colleen definitely has IBS?  Of course not....if you have ever heard the term "You can't prove the negative", here is the time to apply that.   IBS is something that cannot be proven - it can only be given as a cause when everything else comes back and says "No".  Since you cannot prove it, you also cannot ever tell anyone that they definitely have it.  

In any case, that is where we are at the moment - I haven't mentioned anything in this blog about her BodyScan experience, but that for now will be left for another day.    We just want (NEED!) Colleen to be healthy again - whatever path we choose that gets her where she needs to be is the one we will applaud in the end.   I will also write up a separate blog about her GOOD GI doctor soon.