Cause or Effect?

Just over five years ago, shortly after I became unable to eat gluten, I had an incident. One afternoon I started having extreme bloating, and the kind of horrific gas that usually accompanies gluten-poisoning for me. By the early morning hours, I was in the bathroom, while my digestive system emptied itself in waves. Once again, that's what normally happens when I come into contact with gluten. That's why I religiously avoid it! Along side the normal symptoms was intense abdominal pain. It hurt to touch  my stomach. It hurt to put on clothes and have my seatbelt across me. Going over bumps hurt. That was something I'd never experienced before.

I went to the doctor the next morning. She was worried about my appendix, so she sent me for an MRI. The MRI showed such extreme swelling in my intestines that the "T" shape of my IUD, and the uterus containing it, was actually horizontal instead of vertical. My intestines had pushed my uterus out of the way with their swelling.

What caused that? Well, after the MRI, a different doctor, a DO, sat down with me and asked me what I did for a living. When I told him I was a manager, he held my hand, and while gently patting it, informed me that I had an intestinal blockage caused by too much stress and not enough fiber in my diet. Then he turned to my husband and told him to "take better care of her." Mind you, he never asked about my diet, or about my stress level. I guess he just assumed a woman manager must be stressed, eat crap, and need care from her male protector.

I saw a GI specialist shortly thereafter. He looked at my films, then asked me detailed questions about my diet (30 grams of fiber a day via beans, brown rice, almonds, and fruits & veggies - documented via months of My Fitness Pal logs) and my stress level (pretty low as I'd just gotten my dream job managing an awesome team of people doing work I loved). When he had the answers, he politely told me I was an idiot for eating week-old leftover rice. He thought I'd gotten food poisoning, which explained the swelling and pain.

To this day, I don't know which of them was right, but although my stress level has gone up at times, and my fiber intake has gone down, I've never again had the issue - and I've stopped eating brown rice!

The day before the HSG, I was feeling oddly bloated. I had assumed it was because I'd upped my intake of gluten-free oats, which I have trouble with. I'd made a mental note to change my breakfast meal plan next week. In the hours after the HSG, I moved from slightly bloated to massively bloated, and in substantial pain. I couldn't take a deep breath without pain. I couldn't stand up straight without pain. I spent hours in the bathroom early Saturday morning, alternating between the floor and the toilet, in agony. It was like the experience 5 years ago, only worse.

I'll ask my doctor when I see her, but I wonder if I had swelling in my digestive tract before the HSG? If my uterus had been extremely compressed due to unhappy intestines, might that have produced the never-before-seen disappearing uterus on the HSG? Alternately, it's possible the digestive symptoms could have been caused by stress or a reaction to the contrast. Ugh. No clear answers, just more unhappiness.