u/EquivalentAsk9

I was prescribed Citramag last year by a gastro that had no clue about my condition, to take once or twice a week. I ended up on a different regimen and never actually took it.

I'm currently having trouble with my normal laxatives and feel pretty backed up, Im also travelling at the weekend which makes things harder to plan as I'm sure you're all familiar with! It's my understanding that the more backed up you are the harder it is for laxatives to work, is that correct or have I made that up?

Anyway, I still have the Citramag, I'm thinking of taking my usual 10ml sodium picosulfate tonight and then a sachet of citramag in the morning instead of my usual docusate. Does that sound OK? I typically need both stimulant and osmotic laxatives to pass anything, I just don't know how strong a sachet of citramag is and if it's an ok combo.

I can't get hold of my neurogastro guy to ask and noone else has a clue about this condition except you guys it seems.

This is the situation I find myself in (female) and am very worried about infection due to the nature of how explosive linzess can be

2.5 years ago my bowel stopped working overnight and I went weeks and weeks and weeks without a bowel movement as nothing I took helped.

After a lot of drama, hospital visits, passing out, not being believed etc. I eventually found a neurogastro and have been managing my condition ever since with meds.

Like most of you I have been down many rabbit holes and researched medical papers in every spare moment I have. No stone unturned, as I could never accept the 'this is just one of those things' explanation. The impact on my life is too great.

I pushed hard for a back MRI and finally got one. Turns out I have a large tarlov cyst at S3. The radiologist dismissed this as they are common and most are asymptomatic. However over the weekend i started getting pins and needles in my legs, bad leg pain and shooting back lower pain (not new but more intense). I spoke to my neurogastro today and he is pretty certain it is a symptomatic cyst, pressing on the sacral nerves, after reviewing my MRI himself - he has now referred me to a spine surgeon for him to make the call on next steps. None of which are straightforward.

In rough terms, the left side of the colon is controlled by the sacral nerves (right side by the vagus nerve) and I have long suspected there was no peristalsis on the left as it is always empty and backed up on the right. I always thought the problem originated on the right, but now this makes a lot of sense. If the left isn't moving the right side is going to be very congested.

Obviously there are many different causes for this condition but I thought I'd add mine here in case it helps anyone. I'm still a long way from a fix but knowing what the cause is, is so helpful. I now have a solid place to start.

Two years ago, I stopped being able to go to the loo, completely and utterly.

I have to take a cocktail of very strong laxative drugs to make anything happen and am more or less housebound for half the week due to the unpredictable nature of the drugs. Without them nothing happens. Bladder function is overactive but ok.

I have been down every avenue imaginable to try and get this fixed, doctors mostly don't believe me or tell me to eat more fibre.

I recently got a full back MRI in the hope that may shed some light and specifically asked they looked for cause of loss of bowel function
.
"Large perineural cyst at S3 level on left" was reported, no size given.
Conclusion: No pathological findings to explain patient's symptoms.

It sounds like a slam dunk cause to me and a very relevant finding but I am new to the world of Tarlov / Perineural Cysts. I'd appreciate any input.

Has anyone experienced this? About 2 years ago I just stopped going to the loo, completely and utterly. All peristalsis has ceased.

I made it to 2 months+ without a single bowel movement, trust me this was as bad as it sounds. No one would help or believe me and eventually after a *crazy* amount of laxatives and severe distress that i was going to die, things started to move. I am now dependent on laxatives to function at all and am housebound due to the urgent nature of them everyday until midday.

That's the backstory and until now I've been solely focussed on researching GI stuff. However, In 2014 I had a laporoscopy for endo (I didn't even know what it was at the time!) i had a lot of pain and very heavy periods. The periods eased up after the op and the pain persisted, I carried on as we all do.

My operation notes never made it to my Drs records and I just managed to get hold of them. Turns out it was stage 3/4 back in 2014 so I'm thinking maybe theres a link?! No mention of bowel endo in the notes but he was a regular gynae surgeon so not sure how hard he was looking.

If anyone has experienced anything similar I'd love to know. p.s. no constipation cures please, this is not normal constipation its mechanical or nerve related.

I've spent the entire day uploading my MRI imaging into Claude to see if the nhs missed anything. Amazingly claude can read scans without a need for additional software.

Upshot is it seems they have missed something (but also taking it with a pinch of salt as I also know ai can tell you what you want to hear). This is very early technology and I don't know how accurate it is.

However, that said.... what it has uncovered is very exciting! My mri images show my sacral nerve is being compressed by my "very" bulky retroverted fibroid uterus and no one picked it up, i also have a lot of tarlov cysts in the same area which may or may not be relevant. This ties in with all my symptoms and gives me good info to take to my neuro gastro appt in a few weeks time.

Writing this to say it's definitely worth requesting imaging and subscribing to claude for a month to try this if you are feeling tortured and desperately trying to find the cause to your condition. You can only load so many images at a time but if you ask it for a prompt to continue seemlessly in another chat it will so do.