Living with IBS

I am now 72 years old and have lived the diagnosis of a lazy bowel given to me when I was 19 years old. The problem was each bowel movement only produced very small hard movements akin to sheep or goat droppings! My specialist instructed me to eat plenty of fibre and greens. Since at that time our diets consisted of regular bowels of porridge and greens with out meals I shrugged and put up with the condition. At around mid-thirties crippling attacks of anul cramps which reduced me to tears were finally relieved with a prescription of colofac anti spasmodics and I finally realized that if I avoided processed bread and could track down sweetcorn bread then I was must better and had fewer attacks of the neverending cycle of constipation or diarrhoea. During this period I had found it impossible to become pregnant although there was no apparant cause and my husband and I adopted a child. At age fifty three having gone through the menopause without problem I was diagnosed with endemetriosis and finally told why I had never been able to conceive. How medicine has moved on! Apart from the bread, Beans and white sugar I gave up which made life intolerable if I ate them I persevered with my favourite foods and hoped to develop a tolerance. Unfortunately now I find increasing foodstuffs such as onion, mushroom, cauliflower, cabbage and broccolli cause me such discomfort over a period of several days it is just not worth the bother!! I wonder now how much worse this intolerance will become? I should say that from age 55-65 years I took part in bowel cancer prevention trials and had intensive screening which fortunately did not reveal any problems with the colon. I should not complain because I am generally speaking very healthy I would just like to hear from anyone who has had a similar problem for this length of time and secondly, can this continued irritation of the bowel cause worse damage?

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