Hi all,
This is quite complex, so I will do my best to organize it. Any help would be appreciated more than you could imagine! (well, if you're on this forum, actually, I am sure you can probably imagine it very well)
Most worrying symptoms:
- Extreme burning pain in lower abdomen (I can't take this!) - mostly in the late evening. This feels internal, and not at skin level. Best description: A microwave is heating me up from the inside - first heat, then pain, then fire.
- Bad diarrhea for periods of up to 5 days (and never relenting for more than a week or so)
Other related symptoms:
- Fullness after eating even a little
- Sometimes pain in the upper abdomen
- Sometimes pain radiates to groin and inner thighs and back
- Movement or heavy lifting hurts (under ribs, particularly right side)
Symptoms I don't have:
- No nausea
- No acid reflux
Other important info:
- Have been on a series of antibiotics (cipro, augmentin, cipro again)
- Standing seems to alleviate the burning
- Have suffered from allergic type of disorders (was once hospitalized for anaphylaxis that closed my throat - 20 years ago)
- Gallbladder was removed 17 years ago (HIDA scan revealed a very low ejection fraction), symptoms were very bad upper abdominal pain at the time
- 130lb 5'6"
Tests run:
- Upper GI Normal
- MRI Pelvis + Abdominal (Normal - some spinal disk deterioration T11-T12), Sacral Tarlov Cysts seen.
- Fecal fat - normal
- C-Diff, Parasite Normal
- SIBO breath test Normal
- Full liver panel (Normal - no sign of pancreatitis, excess bilirubin, etc.)
- Blood allergy/intolerance (no allergies, some very mild food intolerances)
Timeline leading up to this:
1. Diarrhea
2. UTI
3. Cipro (did cause some GI discomfort while on it)
4. 2 months pass
5. Secondary chest infection
6. Augmentin
7. A month passes
8. Mild Covid
9. A month passes
10. UTI
11. Cipro
12. Burning starts for the first time during Cipro course
13. Two months later - still burning every evening. Some days worse than others. Going insane here, wondering if I'll ever be able to live again.
Things tried:
- Shuffled through entire diet, avoiding different classes of food, drink, medication (on mirtazapine, fexofenadine/Allegra, budesonide inhaler)
- Fasting (seems to help a bit, although it's hard to say that there were no symptoms since I also felt burning from hunger, but it did feel a bit different)
- Probiotics (every day)
- Omeprazole (no relief - just seems to make things worse)
Current thoughts:
- Undiagnosed SIBO (tests are not reliable)
- Mast cell disorder
- Histamine intolerance
- Neuropathy caused by spinal disc compression (apart from known disc issue, the burning seems to improve marginally when I stand up)
- Neuropathy caused by cipro (a possible side effect of the drug)
- Sacral Tarlov Cysts in MRI (may be compressed when sitting?)
The above are all pretty tricky to get a conclusive answer on, so I'm hoping that there's something I've missed and that someone here has some suggestions on what to try next, or a possible diagnosis I can look into.
Many thanks in advance!!!