I know for sure I got one attack from stress and I know someone else that had that happen also. But, of course, my doctor said that can't happen.

I agree that this disease comes from Stress! I am 47 unemployed lost my apartment my vehicle and everything due to the economy and loosing my job. I have had nothing but Stress for the past 5 years! I can't afford to go to the Dr. which doesn't help matters I try not to dwell on the negative but some days it is very difficult. I am lucky to have a Great Boyfriend who takes care of me and my wonderful pets....Kiki (cat) & Buddy (my wonderful Bichon) I am grateful to this message board so I can share and feel heard! Thanks and I hope you feel better soon! So far I have only had one severe attack but I know now that more are sure in my future and look that adds More stress...what to do?

I agree that this disease comes from Stress! I am 47 unemployed lost my apartment my vehicle and everything due to the economy and loosing my job. I have had nothing but Stress for the past 5 years! I can't afford to go to the Dr. which doesn't help matters I try not to dwell on the negative but some days it is very difficult. I am lucky to have a Great Boyfriend who takes care of me and my wonderful pets....Kiki (cat) & Buddy (my wonderful Bichon) I am grateful to this message board so I can share and feel heard! Thanks and I hope you feel better soon! So far I have only had one severe attack but I know now that more are sure in my future and look that adds More stress...what to do?

The thing is, once you've got acute diverticulitis, a stressful event can bring on an attack, and then the diverticulitis makes it hard to manage and handle the stressful event partly because your serotonin regulation is off due to the fact that you have a diverticulitis event. So...it's like a perfect storm of increasing stress since more anxiety is brought on by the irregularity of the serotonin transport. It's a terrible feedback loop. I'm going on an anti-anxiety now and hopefully that will help, but part of the issue is just changing the way I am in the world so I don't take on other people's problems as if they are my own.

I think it is very possible that there is a stress connection. Prolonged stress weakens the immune system which opens the door for infections. Seratonin levels are also lowered by stress.
Celexa is not an anti-anxiety medication . . . it's an anti-depressant from the SSRI group (Selective Seratonin Re-uptake Inhibitors). I hope it works for you. I think it's one of the milder SSRIs but I'm not certain. If you have trouble with it you might ask your Dr about another group of anti-depressants called the Tri-Cyclics.

Thanks for posing the question, ricecake. I've wondered about all kinds of connections to diverticulosis from foods, tobacco, beer, pills, anxiety/depression, etc.

Good links, too. Thx!

Gavas:

The article I linked to documents serotonin transporter irregularities after an acute diverticulitis attack. The other link I sent is written by a surgeon in London who runs a diverticulitis clinic and is researching neurotransmitter irregularities and diverticulitis. Serotonin affects the motility of the gut. They speculate that serotonin irregularities cause motility irregularities which in turn may cause diverticulitis, but they don't know. They do know that once you have diverticulitis a diet rich in plants helps move food through the gut -- but there's no real evidence that diet _causes_ diverticulitis. Personally from my own experience, I would say I've "held" stress in for some time and a was living in a very stressful relationship that ended right before my attack. I have no doubt that the stress precipitated my attack. Still, it's a chronic condition that was very susceptible to stress. (A condition I didn't know I had. I thought I was just gluten intolerant.) And like I say, the diverticulitis made it harder for me to handle stress. By this time, my sigmoid is gone -- cut out. So hopefully, things will improve. So is the relationship!! Haha!! Basically I'm faced with reorganizing how I handle myself in my relationships....for my own survival. I can't keep going like I've been. It just won't work.

Thanks for the tip about the tri-cyclics. I know Celexa is an SSRI, anti-depressant but the main issue I've been having is anxiety that I feel in my gut. My doc gave me the SSRI for it, saying they work for anxiety as well, since they work on serotonin. Are you a physician?

Ricecake,

Very interesting info I must say. You may want to join the "ANXIETY" group here on DS. But I should warn you, there can be some drama there among members as you might expect.

Years ago, when I was first diagnosed with anxiety I was tried on every SSRI beginning with Prozac. Some had me climbing the walls and others made me feel like a zombie. After doing some research on my own I discovered another group of anti-depressants called Tri-Cyclics. I found one (Doxepin) that was specifically designed for my symptoms of depression (anxiety, insomnia, loss of appetite and muscle spasms). I took this info to my doc and insisted he prescribe it for me. Oddly enough, he didn't know anything about tri-cyclics. Seems the doctors push the same drugs on their patients that the pharmaceuticals push on them.

The SSRIs are beginning to show long term side effects that are rather troubling. And because they don't really do the job, the pharmaceuticals are now pushing another drug (Abilify) to add to their SSRIs. Fortunately, the Tri-Cyclics have been around since the 1960s and have a much longer track-record than the SSRIs and have shown almost zero long-term problems. There is one called Desipramine that has shown facial-tics in some patients after many years of use.

My diverticulosis was discovered at a time when I was going through some stressful situations i.e. having to close down my construction business because of a back injury, then a subsequent divorce after 24 years of marriage, followed by a stressful two years back in college at age 40 to qualify me for a new career. More stress in the new job because they put me into management which is very stressful alone but especially so at this employer. Less than a year into this new job, I had my first attack of diverticulitis and had a colonoscopy (while fully awake) to confirm the diagnosis (needless to say the colonoscopy was excrutiating . . . the apparatus was a larger diameter than they are now).

After thirteen years of having attacks 2 to 3 times a year I nearly died with the last one. I was tried on so many different cocktails of anti-biotics it was scarey. When nearly dead, my doctor prescribed a massive dose of three anti-biotics and asked me to fill the prescriptions at different parmacies because he didn't want to draw attention to himself saying: "I could lose my license for prescribing this mixture but your liver and kidneys are showing signs of shutting down and we can't do surgery until the infection is gone. These prescriptions might kill you but the infection definitely will."

Needless to say, that last cocktail worked and after recovering my strength I had the sigmoid removed. The surgeon said it was like rubber and parts of it were necrotic and like "window putty".

Diverticulosis is a very serious condition when it becomes diverticulitis and I urge everyone with this condition to take it very serious. It can kill you.

And no, I'm not a physician.

Hi Gavas:

I think I'll avoid the anxiety group for now. I have enough on my plate. ;-)

Thanks for the tip about Doxepin! I'll check it out. So far Celexa seems okay. I'm in a better mood. It's only been about 2 and a half weeks, but I really don't plan to be on it long term. I also have concerns about long-term SSRI use. Not something I want to do. I just wanted it to get me through this phase and my next surgery. So far it's been a good decision for me, I think.

Do you still have a colostomy? Or have you had your reversal? My initial consultation for my reversal is July 3rd. Exactly 3 months after my emergency surgery. Problem is, it's at a teaching hospital and I'm told a resident will do my surgery. I don't have proper insurance. I'm considering going back to work at a corporate job (I run my own small business) just so I can get the surgery done by my original surgeon. But that would mean living with the colostomy a lot longer probably....I'm just not sure what to do. I wanted to have the take down done laparoscopically, but if I do it at the county hospital, it won't be that way. I'm pretty bummed about it.

HI there! I feel like I'm reading about MY diverticulitis attack! I had 1 on March 7, 2012 ~ ended up in the ER, admitted with 3 days of antibiotics that didn't help anything ~ so emergency surgery on March 10, 2012 due to my colon perforated. Doctor took out 18 inches of my colon and I woke up with an ostomy....I think I'm still in shock that I've been thru all this. Had never heard of diverticulitis before ~ I am counting the days til I can have my re-section & get rid of the bag! My surgeon will not even think about it he said til 6-8 months of healing. So that should be around late Sept/October. I'm going to read the articles you posted, cause I was living quite a busy,stressful life, but everything's come to a screeching halt now. My family doctor has recently placed me on Celexa daily & Ativan at night to help with the anxiety I'm experiencing with the colostomy.

Hi, kdmomof2-

I've been on Celexa for about 2 and a half weeks now and I have to say it's really helping with the anxiety post surgery. My anxiety was through the roof. I know what happened was hard, but I couldn't really explain the constant anxiety until I understood that my neurotransmitters were not functioning properly due to what happened in and to my gut.

Here's another article for you to check out. This one points to probiotics as a useful treatment.

http://www.wjgnet.com/2150-5349/pdf/v1/i1/27.pdf

Also, the book "When the Body Says NO" is fabulous. I can't recommend it highly enough.

Rice,
I never had an ostomy. Had an ectomy. Sigmoid removed and a resection. Fourth day in the hospital, after everything I took in for three days came back up they said I had Ilius bowel (it didn't wake up from surgery). It was the only really bad experience of my surgery. They said if it didn't wake up and come back to life I'd get an ostomy. Fortunately, after an 'ice-chip' diet for 48 more hours it started showing signs of life. By the time I finally got to eat it was my sixth day. That was rough. I was one hungry guy!

Gavas-

At this point a colectemy seems like a dee-luxe operation. Lol. As in-you can get the sigmoid taken out and not have a colostomy bag for 3 months?! It's like plastic surgery! ;-)Plus, no giant scar?! Even better! To be honest, I would run, not walk to the nearest colorectal surgeon if the kind of pain I was having was happening again and was doomed to happen over and over.

I guess one of the bad things about the gluten intolerance craze is that someone like me can think they're gluten intolerant and that even though they're writhing in pain it's really no big deal, cause the problem is they just ate some pizza. (That's what happened; I thought the problem was pizza.) When in reality, you're on your death bed and you're totally clueless until your eyes start glazing over. I just had no idea what the problem was. There was one thing that kept flashing in my mind and it was an episode of Survivor that I watched years ago where this guy had to be helicoptered off the island and show because he collapsed in such intense abdominal pain. I was thinking: maybe this is really as bad as that guy on Survivor...Maybe I _do_ need to go to the hospital; or maybe I can just ride it out. Unfortunately I did that for too long and my bowel ruptured. When they did the CT, they saw "air bubbles" on the outside of my intestine, which they said meant that I had a hole in my intestine. Surgeon showed up about 45 minutes later, examined me, and told me I had peritonitis and was going to die if I didn't have surgery. He said I might end up with a colostomy bag, but wasn't sure. So at least I had a heads up that I might wake up with one, and I sure did. The whole thing has been such a bizarre and tough time.

My bowel took 3 or 4 days to wake up, too. But probably because of the ostomy. I was in the hospital for 8 days, then out, then vomiting like crazy and not able to eat, then back in for another 4.

Gavas, thank you for the information on Serotonin and the gut. It all makes sense. My body has been yelling at the top of it's proverbial lungs that I have too much stress. I had a re-emergence of Shingles pain (Shingles in 1986 @ age 33) and was on Valacyclovir and have been completely unable to sleep without otc assistance and Xanax. I have always managed to keep my stress pressed down deep inside and function but my body is showing me how deep I have pushed it. I'm currently sitting with the hot water bottle on my LLQ abdominal pain and waiting for my Milk of Magnesia to work. I took a Xanax right after I read your post. I have Venlafaxine in the drawer and I've been avoiding starting on it due to one particular side effect I enjoy (not) from it. Sweating! Just what I need in my professional life, sweat dripping down my chin at just the hint of a stressful moment or nothing in particular thanks to my menopausal state.....just one more joy of being a woman I guess. When this bout of diviticular pain is gone I will be adding more significant exercise to my life to combat the stress. God Bless you and all the rest of us as well. Amen!

Actually that was directed to ricecake's post