I need some serious help/advice. IBS after gallbladder removal

Caboclo

Greetings everyone.

I will share my history in the hopes that someone here can give me some advices or maybe someone who went trough similar experience can give me some hope. I know most people here went trough many suffering, so if you think you can help me, I kindly ask you to read what I think will be a long text.

Let's start with how my system used to work. I was the kind of guy who could eat everything. I could count with the fingers of one hand the times I remember having a diarrhea. I didn't use to have constipation either. My intestines were very regular. A movement each 2 to 3 days. I can say I had a perfectly working gastric system. No intolerance to any food.

2 and a half years ago, my former doctor have diagnosed me with gallstones, when I started feeling extreme pain short after eating, specially fatty food. 4 months later I went trough a cholecystectomy, after a pancreatitis. (a stone went off the gallbladder and obstructed the pancreas, as my doctor said. I took massive amounts of antibiotics before getting into the surgery room.

So I wake up and while I was still recovering in the hospital I experienced the first "D". I could feel something was wrong with me, even when I was not feeling the now known symptoms of IBS.

The surgeon said I would totally recover in 2 weeks and would be ready to be back to work. I used to work with computer maintenance, and used to move all around the town and neighbor towns everyday. I started to have "Ds" shortly after lunching. I cannot express the humiliation I went trough and how miserable I feel until I gave up the job. I returned to the hospital, were the doctor said the symptom would "go away" with time. Well, it didn't. He started to blame my emotional state as the cause for the problem, but I say I just reached this state due the symptom I acquired after the surgery. Then he just seemed to ignore my case. Since then I went trough dozen of doctor who asked hundreds of test and I mean it. All of then prefered the "emotional" approach rather to consider the fact I started having these problems after the surgery, and it deeply offended me. I think they like defending themselves. I had colonoscopy, endoscopy, lactose tolerance, gluten tolerance tests, blablabla, you name it. I felt like being turned inside out. Only lactose intolerance were positive, but I didn't have it before going to surgery. No Chron's disease. I took medication to recover my intestinal flora, cause I took many antibiotics and were afraid they affected it.

I started to avoid milk, it's byproducts and food containing milk. It helped a little but not much.
Then I started taking loperamide myself, because no doctor showed interest in my case, they just asked tests over and over, until I realized they had no clue, no interest or were asking colonoscopies over and over just to make me give up and not return to their offices.

With loperamide, my life began to look more like a normal life I had before surgey. Then, a year later something happened. After increasing amounts of loperamide, it simple started to not work anymore. I belive I became tolerant. I took 4, 6 a day and still had "Ds".

I looked for an alternative and found lomotil. But to my surprise and disgust, the drug were recently prohibited from being sold in Brazil, all due economic interests as I see.

I discovered myself that some people who have their gallbladders removed have problems with bile absorption, so the coletiramine stepped in.
I found Questran were helpful, but not quite a solution. So I started having only a small meal a day. I lost 44 pounds since I had the surgery.

So an year passed since I stopped taking "imodium" (here sold as imosec), and have "Ds" once in a while. But I got worse again. I almost lost my new job, I spent a month afraid of getting out of home. I love to travel, to ride my bike far away. I lost my would to be wife, and I can't blame her. Now I can barely move inside my "comfort" zone. I feel like I know every restroom in my city. Thankfully I found a job where I can stay in an office all day long, but I have to travel by airplane at leas once every 3 months. Only alprazolam and lots of loperamide can make me step in a car to the long trip to the airport and heavy traffic, where I fell more vulnerable.

I developed panic disorders, and I experience panic attacks when I am on open or crowded areas.

Nowadays my new doctor is giving me a mix of propanteline, dimeticone, bromazepam, amitriptyline... and loperamide, which started working again after an year without it.

I tried the mix without loperamide and guess what, "Ds" are back. If I had lomotil, I could go from one to another and sleep in peace again. But now I fell like I am sitting in a time-bomb, and this is the best or worst metaphor I can think off at this moment.

I tried to make some friend who travel to Usa and Europe to bring me some packs of lomotil, but they are afraid and I respect that.

I considered going into law measures and find a way to legally have the right to buy/import lomotil. But justice system in brazil is chaotic like anything else here. And I have no doctor to back me up. They don't have the gall (pun intended) to get involved. And I don't think I have the time and money to put it forward. That was a law approved in favor of drug lobbyists, in a 3td world country. Fruitless, expensive, frustrating. Would take years with no results. It would be like fighting a bureaucratic behemoth with a slingshot.

Is that possible that I acquired IBS from the surgery's shock on my system, and also bile absorption problem at the same time, with no lomotil option? Wow, lucky me!

I feel tired, hopeless, miserable, and have considered suicide many many times. Sometimes in an everyday basis. I even gave up at the very last moment. Thankfully my new girlfriend is giving me breath to keep on, and my bosses are sensitive to my situation. But the clock is ticking and maybe you can help me find a way to solve my situation.



Thanks in advance.