SIBO comic book by Dr. Sandberg-Lewis from the SIBO Center. The guy also plays a mean guitar singing about the digestive system.

It has been a little over six months since my gut totally exploded after Christmas and started this whole adventure into the world of SIBO.   I guess it has really been about 9 months but the first three months or so were manageable, it didn’t become really nasty until the end of December when I went back to my normal rice & bean diet after the candida cleanse we did when I thought this was only candida.   It has been six months of ups and downs and still trying to unravel this mess in my gut.

After taking Doxycycline last fall and having gastric distress I went through a whole month of hell and rapid weight loss in January trying to figure out what exactly was wrong with me.    When I found I didn’t have cancer but instead something called SIBO I was pretty happy, SIBO seemed like something that could be cleared up in a few weeks.  Boy was I wrong.  At least with colon cancer you can cut something out if caught early enough, with SIBO you just somehow have to sterilize your small intestine while not destroying your large intestine in the process and then fix any underlying motility issues that allow the bacteria to migrate upstream in the first place.   It is a bitch to get rid of as I’ve since found out and while it is there complications abound.

Continue reading →

I finally started coming out of my relapse last Saturday and have felt fairly decent since Monday morning.  My gut has remained pretty calm most of the time, even after dinner with just a small level of symptoms.  My feet are still numb and bothering me some but I’ll see the neurologist next Friday to start looking into that issue.  Also doing another vitamin cocktail push into my veins that day.   I have an endoscopy scheduled for Monday the 23rd though the bad pressure in my upper GI has let up a lot since my SIBO symptoms have been clearing out.

Continue reading →

During my early May appointment my doctor asked if I’d had a flare-up of symptoms recently.  At the time I was doing pretty well and had been in the longest streak of good days I’d had since the SIBO got really bad in December.   She warned of a typical two to three month flare-up that is experienced by a lot of people on SCD.   I finally went back and re-read Chapter 9 of Breaking the Vicious Cycle and found this little paragraph I’d obviously just overlooked the first time through:

Most cases begin to improve within three weeks after the dietary regime has been started and improvement usually continues.  At about the second or third month, there is sometimes a relapse even when the diet has been carefully followed.  This can occur if the person develops a respiratory infection or for no reason at all.  Do not allow this to discourage you!  Once the individual gets over this, improvement is usually steady with minor setbacks occurring occasionally during the first year.

Continue reading →