Pre diagnosis #2

By my calculations i must be about up to 2003/4 by now - my apologies to anyone who picks up on any timeline inconsistencies,i remember a lot of events but its been quite a feat to try to assemble them into chronological order in my head.

In December 03 (i think!!!!) me and MrS ended our relationship and i fell apart,really fell apart.
I moved into my own flat in Crofton Downs and lived on my own for the first time in ages. It was lonely and i didnt sleep much.My eating went crazy as i rigidly tried to control every aspect of my life that i could.
I was still eating super healthy and not much of it,i had constant stomach pain and i was only having a bowel motion every 3-4 days.

The funny thing about constant pain is that it sort of sneaks up on you. When i think back it seems unbelievable that i tolerated it but at the time it was a bit like this :
it started off very low grade until that just became part of my life,like eating or sleeping.Then a year or so later it was a bit worse and again i thought 'i cant live with this' but then your body (which really IS an amazing piece of machinery) readjusts and realigns itself until that pain is just part of your everyday life too....and so it goes.Till one day (for me it was Feb 2009) you wake up to whats going on and say 'there is something SERIOUSLY wrong with me!!!!'
But anyways, back to 2004-

The other thing that was going on at that time was that my teeth (which have always been a huge problem and hadnt been tended to,apart from brushing,since high school) were giving me MAJOR gripes. I couldn't eat anything even vaguely hard like apples or chippies.
I was inhaling nurofen to deal with the teeth and stomach and i thought in the back of my mind that it was a possibility that my stomach pains came from the infection in my mouth being carried around my body.
The saviour of my sanity arrived one day in the form of MrI and his new girlfriend MissE (who i had never met before) moving into my poky little flat when their old flat disbanded.
I soon discovered that MissE had a golden soul and it was magic having the two of them for company.

Things took another change for me around this time (I'm guessing 2005ish) - i was hungry ALL the time (seriously,all the time)  and with MissE in the house to join me i gladly ditched the obsessive healthy eating  for mostly healthy eating combined with lots of drinking (alcohol).
By now i was only able to have a bowel motion when i was pretty drunk and my body was totally relaxed.
It shortly progressed to the point where i would get drunk several nights a week with the sole purpose of trying to get some action and relief from my body.
I couldn't quite understand how i could be SO hungry all the time when it didnt seem like much was coming out the other end (no doubt an oncologist could tell you why).

My upper K9 finally gave in and my whole face swelled up in the most agonising infection (honestly - get your teeth sorted! believe me that it only gets worse not better!).
MissE had just started going to a good dentist so i went along,got my tooth pulled and for the next 18 months had weekly appointments to get the rest of my mouth fixed up. I, of course, thought that once the infection was gone,maybe,just maybe,my guts would all sort themselves out but this didnt happen.

Meanwhile,emotionally i was very up in the air.i would swing between ridiculously happy and ridiculously unhappy- it must've been hell for MrI and MissE to live with. I was so moody,constantly in pain and worried,despite another visit to a doctor (who told me i was suffering from constipation and gave me a script for metamucil).
I was drinking a lot and eating a lot,still always hungry.
MissE was also suffering from a lot of body related issues borne from stress at work. So i busily self diagnosed myself from what the doctors had been telling her. Finally lovely MissE sat me down and told me she knew a lovely doctor and that i should go see her and have myself checked out again -mental state as well as physical (good advice as i really was all over the place mood wise).

The doctor (who was lovely) checked me out,felt my tummy. Told me i was constipated, listened to my tale of anxiety and weight loss from when i was 18 and referred me to a therapist.
I went off to see the therapist who listened to me telling him that there was something wrong with me,and that i felt that there was something black growing inside of me.
I told him about my dreams of being consumed from within and that there was something WRONG with me.
He asked bout my parents and my childhood (*smiley face at the cliche response*) and told me that i was mildly bi polar,hence the mood swings and negative thoughts.
To my shame to this very day,i believed him (after all, he was the professional and professionals are always right,right?) and told my bosses and my Father (who were all fabulous).

I was still drinking excessively because it made the pain go away for a while and at the end of 2005 (Mr I and MissE ) got engaged and moved back in with the parents to save for a house (and probably a degree of self preservation and a break from living with me).
I MISSED them so much and for quite a while continued drinking on my own from boredom and for escape in the evenings. I threw myself into a couple a relationships that although they lasted,were never going to LAST.
My stomach area in late 2005 was quite bloated and protruded,i just thought that i was fat.

In 2006 Manchild made a reappearance in my life (yay!). He had a broken leg and was off work,came over to watch a movie one day and never left again.
His last girlfriend had left a lot of damage behind her so the next 6 -12 months required a lot of emotional investment from me,into him. It took my mind off the other issues that were going on plus i was SO happy that my mood swings mostly evened out (well,it seemed that way to me anyway).
I had stopped going to the therapist because the things he was telling me didnt seem to fit right and i didnt want to be medicated.
Manchild and i had also made a pact to stop the drinking (mostly a sacrifice on my part since he usually drove so didnt drink) and he told me that the nurofen that i was still guzzling (to cope with the stomach pains) actually caused stomach pain if you took too many and on an empty stomach (both things that i did).
I stopped taking the Nurofen cold turkey (which was a bit hellish after having them daily since 2001) and my stomach pain and bloating did ease up quite a bit.
Around this time the nausea also kicked up another notch and i started losing weight (which i was thrilled about at the time).I was still always hungry but the weight started dropping off (about bloody time,i thought).
I was tired all the time,mostly manchild would drop me at work and pick me up so i wasnt walking anymore.
We would sit down to watch a movie in the evening and i would fall asleep- it was crazy,i would be fighting to force myself to stay awake but every evening i would be asleep on the sofa at 8pm (or whenever it was).
I was 29 and just figured i was getting old.