Diverticular disease and slowed transit

Started 7 July 2025 · 17 replies · 167 hearts · read 1.3k times

EphraimBrooklyn, NY · 7 July 2025

about a year ago

Starting a thread on this because it keeps coming up in ones and twos: Diverticular disease and slowed transit

Squeamish subject, so I am going to be plain about it and get it over with.

I have written down what has actually happened, in order, because I find that more useful than my summary of it.

I am aware some of this may be nothing. I would still like to know whether other people have had it, because I have spent a fortnight assuming I am the only one.

Thanks all. Genuinely.

NoraDublin, IE

I did exactly the same and felt terrible about it. You have not done anything wrong.

ÖzlemIzmir, TR

Reading the opening post, I recognised more of that than I expected to.

Practical, boring answer: write the three questions down before you go in. I have never once remembered them otherwise.

10me too 9

NyalaAddis Ababa, ET

Have you got anyone who can be with you when you do it? It made an enormous difference to me and I felt silly asking.

TomásFacilitatorLisbon, Portugal

I will leave this open for a few more days and then add it to the circle's resources, because the answers here are better than anything I would have written.

BrackenHexham, UK

the reply above said something I want to sit with for a second.

My experience was very boring, which I offer as data. Some of us just get a dull time of it.

9me too 6

BryherIsles of Scilly, UK

What helped was lowering my own expectations of the week rather than trying to hold the week together.

AleksLjubljana, SI

Coming back to this a fortnight later to say it settled. Leaving the update because I hate reading threads that stop.

GethinMerthyr Tydfil, UK

Building on what the reply above wrote rather than answering the original question.

I am the person who had the frightening version of this. I went in, it was investigated, and it was not what anyone feared. Going in is the whole of my advice.

BramberSteyning, UK

the reply above — yes, and the bit that took me longest to accept was the next part.

Similar here, and mine turned out to be a completely unrelated deficiency picked up on bloods.

BibiRabat, MA

#10

I have been in this circle a year and this question comes round every few months. It is not a silly question. It is the question.

BettinaGraz, AT

#11

My pharmacist was more use than anyone. Ten minutes at the counter, no appointment, no charge.

EphraimBrooklyn, NY

#12

the reply above — yes, and the bit that took me longest to accept was the next part.

Can I gently push back on one thing? Not the substance, just the framing — you have written twice that you should be coping better. Who told you that?

NoraDublin, IE

#13

What the reply above described happened to me too, in a slightly different order.

The thing that changed it for me was going slower, agreed with my prescriber. I am not suggesting you do that. I am saying the conversation exists.

ÖzlemIzmir, TR

#14

I am about four months behind you and I have been dreading exactly this, so thank you for writing it down before I got there.

NyalaAddis Ababa, ET

#15

Reading the reply above, I recognised more of that than I expected to.

Please do not read the comments under news articles about this. I lost a fortnight to that.

TomásFacilitatorLisbon, Portugal

#16

Gently: you have apologised three times in a post where you have done nothing that requires an apology.

18me too 6

BrackenHexham, UK

#17

I asked my nurse the same question and she said something I have repeated ever since: that the aim is to keep you on treatment, not to get you up the schedule.