Hi, I have been chronically constipated for about 3 years(in that time I have had to manually disempact my bowels most of the time, and my frequency of spontaneous bowel movements has decreased significantly). I didn't speak to my doctor about it when it started because 10 years ago I had IBS diagnosed and thought it was just normal for me. About 18 months ago I started having muscle pain in my neck, back, wrists, hips. I have been to orthopaedics and they find nothing wrong with my muscles other than the pain and tension, it has been put down to RSI etc. It had not occurred to me that the constipation and muscle pain were connected until I decided to start concentrating on sorting it out. I have now been using various laxatives most days for the past two months and my muscle pain has almost gone. If I don't take laxatives for a few days then the muscle pain gets worse again. I also have intermittent abdominal pain and my abdominal area is usually tender to the touch. I have had red blood from anal area a few times and I have white and yellow mucus in my stool, sometimes dull orange. I also have what appears to be dead tissue in my stool, sometimes I pass only this dead tissue with mucus (no actual stool), my stools are pencil thin about a third of the time, and often I find that I have long strings of dead tissue with thin stool twisted around it. My history is that I have taken a lot of antibiotics ( ten course over a period of 15 years, that includes 3 course in short succession at age 15 when I had mono that was misdiagnosed as strep throat, one age 25 due to tonsillectomy and six courses between ages 26 to 30 due to infections.) I was diagnosed with GERD age 22 and took PPI pills for 8 years. I took the contraceptive pill for 8 years. I am 32 now. I also have fatigue, migraines, and other problems too. I wondered if anyone could say whether it is normal for dead tissue to be present in stool or if it is indicative of some disease and what that might be. Thank you