I describe my journey and the confusing picture and overlap between the conditions of Diverticulosis, Irritable Bowel Disease, Coeliac Disease and Bowel Cancer.
My history of intermittent constipation, abdominal pain and swelling are typical signs of several different bowel problems, most importantly bowel cancer. Gluten intolerance or Coeliac disease can present like this, but so too can Diverticular disease or Diverticulosis. Diverticulitis is usually accompanied by a high temperature and left-sided abdominal pain and tenderness. In my case the absence of any temperature or tenderness made it less likely.
Bowel cancer is more common in the 50’s and 60’s but can occur at any age, including the 20s and 30s. The only signs may be occasional intermittent constipation or diarrhoea. Bowel cancer should be caught at a very early stage, when there are only mild symptoms. These may be only a small change in bowel habit or more advanced signs where the cancer is well established. These include; bowel obstruction passing mucus or blood rectally, with the stool or on the toilet paper.
My symptoms should properly have been checked out some years ago. I remember thinking that I ought to have a routine colonoscopy when I reached 50, but somehow that got forgotten.
Predicting when the symptoms were going to occur
I found that I would experience some anal itching 24 hours before the constipation and abdominal pain would start. Taking metronidazole (an antibiotic for bowel problems) early in an attack would settle things down or shorten an attack from 2-3 days to just one day. Thinking back, these episodes had become more common over a year or two, and increased from once or twice a year to occuring every month.
The symptoms were getting worse and Coeliac Disease
By early 2017, the episodes of constipation were happening five or six times a year. I had found that eating pizza, bread or a high-gluten diet made the symptoms worse. This association with gluten and bread meant that I may have gluten intolerance or coeliac disease.
Gluten intolerance is where the body has difficulty digesting gluten and wheat products. Coeliac disease is where the body has an allergy to gluten and wheat products such that the body small intestine reacts adversely to the gluten. Gluten originates in wheat and therefore, is present in all foods where flour is used.
Characteristically, after eating such foods, coeliac patients become distended have abdominal pain, colic and constipation or diarrhoea. Naturally, avoiding foods with gluten decreases the severity of the symptoms. Sometimes severly affected Coeliac patients have to avoid any trace of gluten or flour in their food.
As it turned out, my diagnosis of diverticulosis proved to be correct, and after that was treated, all the symptoms of gluten interance dissapeared. But, I was aware that I was lucky that I did not have bowel cancer. The medical advice would be to be that even with mild symptoms go to see your general practitioner for a check-up.
