Irritable Bowel Syndrome
(IBS)
This site contains facts, information and the personal experience of an
Irritable Bowel Syndrome sufferer

Hi and welcome to my website

I am an active 71 year old fellow from Birmingham in the West Midlands of the UK and have previously written of my experiences with a genetic iron overload illness called haemochromatosis
In the previous writings I mentioned how my general health condition was very good and that I lived a normal happy and healthy life but there is one aspect that I didn't mention - an aspect that did, in fact, cause me a lot of mental anguish and that is Irritable Bowel Syndrome or IBS as I shall call it. This is a fairly common illness that is suffered by many people.
IBS is an illness with many different symptoms and facets and I do not intend to give an encyclopaedic account of these but instead I am going to give a personal account of how this distressing disease influenced my life and how I learned to cope with it until eventually after many years of being its victim my IBS  was cured.
When I was about fifteen I was due to leave secondary school and was a normal slightly built fun loving youth who enjoyed outdoor pursuits, field sports and communal gregarious activities such as boy scouts, army cadets, and boys brigade and life was pretty carefree and I was optimistically looking forward to a new change of life in the adult world when the first blow fell: my dad died of a cerebral haemorrhage at the age of 52 and undoubtedly this put me under considerable adolescent distress of being a 1950's youth teetering on the brink of manhood in a family with no father figure - no adult male role model..... there is no doubt that I became rather quiet and possibly even rather insecure at this time.

I was a normal healthy young lad

Shortly after my father's premature death, I started to attend a fairly distant college to qualify as an engineering draughtsman. About this time I started to have some very distressing and anxious moments by having an urgent need to empty my bowels at odd irregular times, especially in the early part of the day when I needed to travel. For a shy diffident lad of fifteen this was a hugely embarrassing affliction to have to cope with and it had a devastating effect on my personality, resulting in me withdrawing into myself.
To most friends and people whom I knew at that time, this seemed like a trivial quirk in my every day regime but to me it was a severe blow to my young ego. One grave consequence of this affliction was having to make detailed itineraries of every public toilet on all outings and public events and dominated my thinking for many years and causing such distress that my whole life style was grossly limited and holidays became a nightmare. This was further exacerbated by the gradual closure of nearly all public toilets in the UK because of increasing vandalism and the cost of keeping them manned.
In my teenage years I was enlisted for two years in the British Army and coping with these two years was a period of severe mental agony.  Of course  I went for medical examination and tests in these early years and clung to the hope of some miraculous instant cure but became disillusioned in realising that medical practice and treatment could do little for me. In fact, the midwife who came to attend the birth of our three children got to know us quite well and she gave me as much idea of a diagnosis as any of the medical 'experts' of the 1960's when she told me that in her opinion I had a 'spastic colon'. More advice than that was beyond her scope, so knowing what it was called wasn't a great deal of help or comfort. One of the most unpleasant procedures I endured was called sigmoidoscopy where they insert a solid optical tube up your anus to get a view inside your lower bowel but this was of limited use and always brought to mind the thought of being impaled on a piece of conduit, but procedure was used extensively until fibreoptic flexible tubing became available. This permitted a far more comfortable examination and a more effective one since it could probe more deeply.
One amusing event that was caused by my condition was on my wedding day many years ago when it was coming up to speech time at the reception and of course any form of stress aggravated my condition dramatically. The inevitable happened and mid-way through the speeches I began to feel most uncomfortable. The reception was being held in the Church Hall of St Andrews Church West Bromwich (UK) which was an rickety old building  with a primeval toilet contraption attached outside in the grounds - there was no alternative but to make a dash to it only to be faced with even further dismay and dilemma as I do not think that the diocese had ever thought of toilet paper. I looked around frantically but there was nothing and I searched my pockets of my wedding suite and all I could find were my wedding lines.  Thanks to a clerically minded registrar they were in an envelope and so the day was saved, albeit uncomfortably and my wedding lines remained intact.

Sharp eyed visitors to this site may well notice the spots on my arms in the adjacent photo taken recently. This is a constant reminder of psoriasis which has also plagued me. If you have this disability have a look at my accompanying site on psoriasis

I went despondently to a series of doctors to try and gain some assistance and I think most of them considered me to be just one more person with this unattractive and rather nebulous condition named  IBS I tried all sorts of different medications from over the counter, including bottles of Chlorodyne  (an early Cholera remedy) which I used to swig down until my head span as it contained morphine, chloroform and other sedative ingredients and I also started to buy  bottles of Kaolin and Morphine which I would happily drink a whole 200ml bottle in one go if I had an appointment or any journey to make. On one occasion I went to a wedding in Paris with several bottles in my case -  I’m talking about the sixties here, so these were glass bottles, not plastic and the horror of all horrors occurred as they broke in transit and my clothes and belongings became soaked in an awful white sludge and the pervading stench of peppermint. Such was my dependence on Kaolin and Morphine that at one time a large pharmacy chain in South London,  suspecting my addiction refused to sell any more of it to me; however this was not too much of a difficulty as I simply rotated my purchases from other pharmacies. Eventually, a doctor whom I saw privately at the then Hallam Hospital in West Bromwich (UK) put me on a high dose of Codeine Phosphate of which one of the effects is to slow down the natural rhythm of the bowel system. This worked moderately well but required fairly high doses and at that time nobody took the trouble to advise me that this medication was an addictive opiate and that I was likely to become a dependent junkie from it. I struggled on with these aids and developed other coping strategies such as timing my daily journeys to avoid early morning   appointments and over the years I became used to coping with what was really a tiresome and distressing disability.
When I was in my mid-fifties I realised quite startlingly that I was no longer a victim of the symptoms of IBS. It did not take long to realise that the only major change in my health had been the diagnosis of haemochromatosis which is a life long hereditary iron overload condition which was treated by weekly blood lettings to remove the excess of iron. It was obvious that my IBS had gradually subsided as my body removed its excess of iron. This happened about 15 years ago and I have enjoyed a period of peace with no symptoms of IBS at all. I then tackled the problem of my addiction to Codeine Phosphate and gently weaned myself off it.  Now, with IBS becoming a distant memory and my addiction for Codeine Phosphate under control, I tackled the last of my demons -  alcohol.  Drink had become a problem.
Before I finish off with some suggestions to help cope with IBS I must emphasise that my release from this terrible illness was brought about with the discovery and treatment of my 'iron overload' condition Haemochromatosis - this disease was brought about because of a recessive genetic illness of which both my parents would have been carriers and I do not want to suggest nor imply that that IBS is caused or influenced by iron in the body: it probably was in my case but each individual suffering with IBS must follow the advice of his medical practitioners.
I am now delighted to relate that the withdrawn angst ridden lad of all those years ago became an active and gregarious person once this illness was put to rest. Continue to my page on Symptons or click here to read a glossary of terms used in my narrative.

click here for a glossary of terms used above

www.ibstales.com Here is an interesting American website operated by Sophia Lee who has suffered badly with IBS for twenty years. She has also written an engaging book about her struggle to overcome IBS.

I am just a guy who was diagnosed late in life and wants to help other sufferers. I am 71 and am a retired teacher and still lead a normal life and travel frequently. I just consider that this is an important message to get across to people.

For any of you who are members of a society or club where you require speakers, please click here for details of my talk which is called 'Any Old Iron'. Details of several other public speakers covering a wide range of subjects are also available through the site Public Speakers Corner