Anybody else suffering from extreme fatigue and/or chronic diarrhea?

oldbeauty said:

So far....

I am finding that one 2 mg pill daily binds me up too much.  My drug plan does not cover the liquid 1 mg dose.  Because it clears the system w/in 24 hours, it would not be useful to dose myself every other day bc that would have me on a roller coaster of dosing.  Admittedly, I've only tried this for a little over 1 week.  I took 2 pills the second day and then I became a concrete factory after no production for two days!  No happy medium yet.  I will persevere.  Reading about Loperamide, I was surprised to see that it was treated like an opiod when it first came on the market, a Schedule 2 drug.  I did not realize it works by "narcotizing" the bowel to slow down motility and allow fluid absorption.  My problem has persisted for almost 4 years and I never thought to try Imodium.  I don't know why; probably my aversion to taking "drugs."  The fact that Imodium works suggests that my problem is not that chemo may have destroyed the "organ/cells" responsible for absorbing fluid before elimination but that chemo may have done something that triggers motility such that things move faster than this "organ" can accommodate.  I don't really understand.  But if my system is able with assistance to absorb the fluid so I can have more acceptable bowel function, I think I will bite the bullet and stop the Imodium trial and try instead the daily ingestion of psyllium powder to see if that more natural approach works.  That, actually, was what my PCP suggested a few years ago.  Metamucil here I come!  Thanks for the articles and the personal experience stories.  They help.  Best wishes, Oldbeauty

Just FYI, any loperamide I've ever bought was 2 mg and scored so they were easily broken in half. I did always find that it lasted me longer than 24 hours 

MoeKay said:

My Unique Dilemma

Like cmb and some of the other women mentioned above, I too have most (but clearly not all) of my bowel problems in the morning.  In all the years of my bowel issues, however, I've never taken one Imodium or any Metamucil whatsoever.  Years ago, my gastroenterologist told me to steer clear of Metamucil because since I completed treatment in 1999, I also have had many intermittent partial small bowel obstructions.  Right now I do take colesevelam, which is a bile acid sequestrant, for my bowel issues, but my doctor will only allow me to take 1/2 the recommended dose, because it too is contraindicated for people with a history of bowel obstructions.  I had bowel obstructions many years before I took colesevelam, so I know that's not why I have one every year or so.  I also take the colesevelam for my elevated LDL cholesterol, so it's kind of like a 2-for-1 treatment.  They alternative would be a statin, but statins have diarrhea as a possible side effect, so I've declined to go that route.  As someone who has had about 20-25 bowel obstructions over the past two decades, given the choice, I will take my frequent bowel movements and loose stools, which affect quality of life but are not painful.  Obstructions, on the other hand, are extremely painful and debilitating, and actually life-threatening if they don't resolve on their own, as all of mine have fortunately done in the past. 

What I am going to try now is to add a calcium supplement, which the article I posted above mentions as a potential treatment for mild chronic diarrhea.  And as cmb is going to try with Imodium, I'm going to take the calcium in the evening, since I have most of my bowel problems early in the day.  I'm also planning to cut back on two of my favorites: dark chocolate and nuts, which I tend to overdose on, because both contain high amounts of magnesium, which can sometimes cause diarrhea or loose stools. 

Let's hope that those of us with new plans of action for dealing with our wayward bowels are met with great success!

I sent my one of my sisters the article on Chronic Diarrhea and learned that she does take Welchol (colesevelam), a bile acid sequestrant you mentioned in an earlier article, which I didn't realize when I commented earlier in this thread. While she still has diarrhea at times, she commented that she needs to talk with her doctor as she feels it may now be contributing to the incidents of constipation she is having more frequently now.

But you're right to be very concerned about bowel obstructions. While my parents had other health problems when they died, bowel obstructions were actually the precipitating cause in both of their deaths.

I just switched to the bedtime dosing of Loperamide. I'm curious to see if it will help. I'd like to get back to taking walks in the morning as I did years ago, but haven't done since Metformin started my diarrhea issues that tend to occur in the morning.

Since Eldri's good news in another thread about how escitalopram is helping both her diarrhea and neuropathy, I wanted to update the comments I made here regarding Loperamide (Imodium). It's been some time since I switched from taking one tablet of Loperamide mid-morning as I had been doing for a few months to one tablet at 10:00 pm. But what I've found is that taking Loperamide at night often results in my waking up early to go the bathroom. And once I'm that awake, I usually can't go back to sleep. This is a problem since I now go to bed much later than when I was working full time.

The once daily dose of Loperamide still helps to keep my diarrhea under control most of the time. But I'm not sure I'll stick with the nighttime dosing. Living on 4-5 hours of sleep is what I did for years when working and I'm not anxious to return to that schedule.

But for you early risers out there, bedtime dosing might work better.