My story: Yes. I have either functional diarrhoea or indeed IBS-D. Several gastroenterologists that I had wound up going to seem to be ‘fence-sitting‘ on this one. Something; IBS, others unexplained diarrhoea, and one gastroenterologist thought Munchausen Syndrome, as to play ‘hookie’ (skipping school).
Point is, that I do have frequent to chronic bouts of diarrhoea. (To my understanding, the only real difference between FD and IBS-D is the latter entails abdominal pain and cramping. In my case, sometimes I get painful cramps and sometimes it is just well… diarrhoea. (There has also been question whether I might have sucrose intolerance as well, but that thus far has not been confirmed). Yes, I have already gone through a battery of tests, endoscopy and colonoscopy inclusive.
Now, I sometimes do react to sweet foods – especially if regular ‘table sugar’ would be the sweetening agent. So Once again whatever the cause, I have got frequent bouts of the runs and have to make quite a few mad dashes to the closest cottage or loo, mostly successfully, but sometimes, well… not so successful! (Yes, I shall be the first to admit that I have had more than my fair share of rather embarrassing and nasty public diarrhoea accidents).
Now to how I suspect all this started. It is of my high opinion that this began in 9th grade (freshman year) of high school. I was living in West Los Angeles at the time as I was only 15 years old. There had been a criminal incident at my school that caused the place to close for disinfection and massive cleaning, after either sustaining a bad student prank going bad, or indeed some disgruntled school cafeteria worker who had decided to take revenge.
I had subsequently found out that he (yes gender identified) was either a schoolmate who had pranked that went wrong, or some school employee that had taken revenge, as he had apparently, according to what I have heard from a classmate from my 3rd period science class, that he had surrendered to the police, and was due to be arraigned and put on trial. (I am of course only assuming that he most likely subsequently spent (or still spending) some time behind barbed wire!
It is called mass chemical food poisoning, and endangering the health and possibly the lives of the student body. There were so far as I know, approximately 900 schoolmates (90% of the school) affected, fortunately no fatalities. It was quite messy! I of course also had gotten sick, I mean almost to the point of needing to go to some emergency ward in the greater Los Angeles area (I opted out only because I lived only one block from my school). A great number of my schoolmates were sent to the ambulance queue, as a triage from the LAFD was set up at the admin building.
I had never seen so many ambulances out by the school in my life! So I had been released from school to go home. (Yes. en route, I did have my first public embarrassment). I was sick the rest of that day, all the following night, and most of the next day before I began my recovery phase, thus just over more or less a 24 hour period. (The diarrhoea and stomach cramps were in my estimation moderate to severe).
I sincerely believe that this had been very instrumental just three years later in my senior year (12th grade) that it was that same school where I had experienced my first diarrhoea attack of IBS (or indeed functional diarrhoea). I honestly think that this major incident at my high school had put enough stress on my intestinal tract that had as a result triggered the chronic diarrhoea situation (BTW that has been still continuing to the present, never fully resolved).
This is an account of what I believe had been my initial trigger for FD or IBS. It was a horror hard to be believed. It had taken its toll on me.
