Sunday, September 9, 2012

Tapering off the Imodium

You guys probably know that I've been taking a half tablet of Imodium almost daily to control the most life-limiting effect of my IBS- the diarrhea. It has worked better than anything else I've ever tried before, but I've been wondering how I'd do once I went off of it. My guess was that the diarrhea, cramps and urgency would come back just as strong as before, and almost immediately.

I have a four day weekend (again!) this weekend, so I decided to go for it. At first I was going to taper off- go from taking it daily to every other day then every 2 days and so on- but I wanted results more quickly than that. And, if it doesn't go well, I wanted to have at least a day to start taking it daily again and recover before my 13 hour day on Wednesday.

Today is the day after my second skipped dose. I haven't had any urgency or any loose stools. I'm actually going less often than I have been going the past few days which is definitely interesting. There was one kind of strange thing that happened after stopping it though- I'm not sure if it's a complete coincidence or what, but I thought I'd mention it. I skipped my first dose Friday night, and I was taking a nap last night- around 24 hours after my first skipped dose- and I woke up. My intestines felt incredibly weird. Like numb and tingly, but only certain stretches of my intestines were numb. After I walked around a bit while getting ready for bed and spent some quality time with my heating pad, the feeling went away.

It could have been that I was sleeping in a position that put pressure on a nerve and that section literally just fell asleep- I was sleeping on a full size bed with two dogs and a cat who thought they owned the bed...

Anyway, I bought a bag of BBQ chips Friday and there's only 1/4 of the bag left, and I'm still doing just fine. I don't know about you guys, but BBQ chips were my favorite growing up and they would absolutely kill me if I overdid it before the Imodium. Hopefully it stays like this and I don't have to take the Imodium every day. I'm not a fan of taking meds, so taking one daily annoys me.

By the way, thank you guys for the increase in comments I've been getting recently! I love interacting with people out there going through the same things I am.

No comments:

Post a Comment