I am just starting to use the forum and am really appreciating it. I always hesitate to share my personal experiences, don’t want to lead someone in the wrong direction but this area compelled me to write. Last summer, I suffered several personal losses as well as a very bad streak of Covid for my loved ones and myself and my body seemed to shut down on many levels. I didn’t have a BM for more weeks than you would believe. My pcp’s office would only say go to the ER bc I was going to die. With the Covid symptoms, they would only say again to go to ER. Our ER was terrible, 8 to 12 hours waiting time, full of very sick Covid patients, some patients throwing up and even people fighting. We finally turned to Patient First who tried many things and most,y reassured that I would eventually get through this. We were so grateful for them. I have always had to be careful about constipation so was familiar with many remedies and we tried them all, oftentimes at the same time, enemas, suppositories, stool softeners and kicked up doses of Miralax, laxatives, fiber supplements, prunes, prune juice and a very controlled diet. I also had prescribed meds and as a last resort telling me only one dose of something that I forget. I was given a few doses of it bc one dose couldn’t be pulled from the bottle with the dropper. It came with a warning to only take one dose and throw the rest away. I was so frantic that I ended up taking it all and still had no results! Shocking to me was that I wasn’t feeling terrible through this much time. I continued to eat very little but was enough to sustain me. I ended up going to a gastro doctor who tried to do a colonoscopy but my bp shot up to over 200 and anesthesia wasn’t safe. He did give me a sigmoid exam without any sedative which was negative. He prescribed Linzess and I finally started to move. I took regular doses for a couple of months and it seemed to become too harsh and I was able to go back to a supportive diet, prunes once in a while, and a half dose of Miralax first thing in the morning and the other half before bed. I figured it out that the two smaller doses worked better than the one larger dose which is what I still do. I panic if I miss a day or have trouble moving and kick everything up. I am sorry this got so long but hope it might help someone as I know how difficult it is.

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