OK, so that title’s not gonna win me any headline-writing competitions, but those of you who have read my Top 10 Stupid Things Said to IBS Sufferers may have got the reference.
This post is about the one stupid thing that we as IBS sufferers say to each other. I could only think of one as opposed to 10 because we IBS people are obviously more intelligent than that other lot. So – onto the stupid. And the stupid goes something like this…
“I have been taking this pill for three weeks now and it has cured me completely, you should all run out and try it right this second!”
Or this:
“I have been taking this pill for three weeks now and it has made my symptoms 300 times worse, you must never ever take this pill on any account ever even if it’s the last pill on Earth.”
Why are those things so stupid, and what do they have in common? Because drugs, and any other treatment, affect people differently. That’s it.
I receive lots of IBS stories and treatment reviews in my webmaster capacity, whole truckloads of the things, and the vast majority are very useful and well-written and I am proud to display them on my sites in the hope that they might help people find out about different treatments and gain some hope that there really are treatments that work.
However, I do find that I sometimes need to edit out the odd comment, the ones where people tell me and other sufferers, with absolute certainty, that I must never ever ever take Lotronex, say, or Imodium, despite the fact that there are already 12 glowing reviews of Lotronex or Imodium on the site, and despite the clinical trials that show the drugs work for many people.
You see this on all kinds of health forums across the net – people who have had a good or bad experience with a drug or product and then proceed to either tell everyone that they must take it immediately or else, or not touch it with a bargepole. And it’s just daft.
If you’ve been to a restaurant and they took two hours to serve you then fine, tell everyone you know that it’s rubbish. But if you just tried a treatment and it didn’t work for your particular symptoms, in your particular body, then just say “It didn’t work for me” and leave it be. Because otherwise you might be warning someone away from the one treatment that could actually change their life.
Juliet Cottam // Jul 17, 2008 at 9:18 am
Sophie – I love your Tree blog head picture – but i am sure that it is coincidence that the arrangement of those trees so closely resembles the microscopic image of the villi in the intestines, that absorb nutrients from the food passing along, towards our unfortunate bowels !!! there may be some readers who while very aware of their bowels ( aren’t we all?) do not know wehat the surface of the inner area looks like – I hope I don’t sound like a know-all, but as a Biology teacher for 30 years I have an educational knowledge – and an unfortunate one- called IBS, of what goes on, or doesn’t, inside that long tube known to most of us as The Guts! Ref: the July blog, I still champion Imodium, and am sure that I must have shares in their firm by now, I seem to have purchased so many over the years – upgrading each time a new version hits the pharmacy shelves. They suit me, but as Sophie so rightly says they won’t – or don’t- suit everyone.
IBS Space // Jul 21, 2008 at 6:12 pm
Sophie,
You are absolutely right. Also, remember that some of those comments on those products could be posted by either the makers or even competitors!
Debbie // Aug 14, 2008 at 9:50 pm
I have had a couple of not-very-intelligent things said to me by a fellow IBS sufferer, and she was a counsellor (at my GP’s), so she really should have known better!
During my first session, I told her that IBS was ruining my life. When she told me that she had IBS too and knew how awful it was, I felt really optimistic. I assumed that I’d be able to talk freely with her about it, without getting those blank looks of incomprehension that you tend to get when you say that you are depressed because you have IBS. People often respond to that with, ‘Yes, but what are you *really* depressed about?’. Well, isn’t having IBS enough of a problem? Or doesn’t it qualify? How wrong I was!
Not-very-intelligent thing number 1: She tried valiantly to persuade me that my IBS was stress-related and had something to do with unresolved issues with my parents, or some other baloney. She wouldn’t believe me when I said that I knew this wasn’t the case. (I suppose I was in denial, as the psychologists would say?) I know that many IBS sufferers do find that stress has a lot to do with their IBS, but just as many don’t. Everybody’s different. After all, IBS is just a vague umbrella term; how dare she assume that just because she felt that her IBS was stress-related, mine must be too? Like Sophie says above, everybody’s body is different. I wasn’t sitting there trying to convince her that stress had nothing to do with her IBS, was I? I accepted what she said about herself and I expected her to reciprocate.
Not-very-intelligent thing number 2: When I mentioned that I spent time searching the internet for self-help ideas and chatting online with other IBS sufferers, she told me to stop looking for something that would relieve my symptoms. She said I was wasting my life away doing that, and it wouldn’t work. She said I just had to learn to accept the IBS; after all, that’s what she had done, and she was doing ok.
Yes, but with so many people out there who have found a way of controlling their symptoms, I don’t think I should give up so easily. I know I have spent lots of time (and money!) trying out treatment after treatment, with little success so far, but I could be just one treatment away from a significant alleviation of my worst symptoms. And once I’ve succeeded, it will have been worth all the time and energy expended.
By the way, I stopped seeing her pretty soon after that. I was lucky enough to get free counselling via the occupational health service at my work, and the lady I saw there was much more sensible and helpful. She was intelligent enough to keep any ideas she had about stress and IBS to herself . During one of my last sessions she said to me, ‘You know, when I first met you, you seemed so completely and utterly wretched and wrung out with misery, that I thought that that was just part of your personality and I suspected that that had something to do with causing your IBS, but when I got to know you, I realized that it’s only because you’ve been suffering so much with the IBS over the last few years that you’ve become like that, and it isn’t really you at all.’
And then – this is the really good bit – she said, ‘I have a relative who has IBS-D, and she always seems so anxious, and I’d always thought that that was a part of her personality and that that was why she had IBS. Now I realize that it’s more likely to be the IBS causing her anxiety, and not the other way round. After all, if I was in her position, always having to make sure that I wasn’t too far away from a toilet, because otherwise I’d be at the risk of having an accident, I’d no doubt be terribly anxious too.’ A result!