Husband ill with nausea and diarrhoea for 4 weeks

Tilly8, please tell us how your DH is doing and if you are managing okay. I hope he is being treated and getting better. It must be so frightening for you.

I am a normally fit and well 80 year old man who travelled to Sydney from UK at the end of March to spend five weeks with my son and his Australian wife and their children. Two days after arrival the diarrhoea with no blood started and continued for three weeks interrupted by loperamide (Imodium) when necessary. Both my son (orthpaedics) and his wife (radiotherapy) are doctors and they insisted that I consulted a local GP who ordered a stool sample. This was negative and free of parasites and pathogens (bacteria) but viruses, being so numerous and varied, cannot be routinely detected. After the three weeks the symptoms began to resolve and finally on the threshold of my homeward journey I was pretty well back to normal.

But then... after the same period of two days it all started again including a dull pain in my back like one gets when they're cold, and once each time accompanied by fleeting nausea. It was uncanny that it should be identical in its inception with only two common factors: a very long flight with one stop in Delhi airport with jet lag, and the carrier - Air India. I am not implying that Air India is a risky airline and that gastro upsets that people often get when on holiday in the sub-continent, as their caterers both at the start (LHR) and Delhi Airport the Sydney airport for the return are nothing but professional.

Actually, all your various tales of woe have encouraged me to stop fretting! My own GP this morning (an amazingly prompt appointment only three days after landing) said that I should monitor the diarrhoea for a period of up to four weeks and report back if there's no improvement and she'll request a colonoscopy. She also gave me a FIT test for when the bowel settles down.

The lesson from all this is that bowel behaviour is often a mystery!

Eloethan

Hasn't Norovirus been going round recently? That can be very nasty.

I hope your GP can find the cause of these symptoms and offer some interim treatment while arranging for various tests to be done.

Yes. My daughter has it at the moment.

Franbern

PLEASE do NOT google. I really do think that so-called Dr Google should be totally banned. Often gives completely misinformation, nearly always causes unnecessary alarm and worries . Talk to your GP,

Pleaase do google. An intelligent person, which I assume anyone on GN is should be capable of assessing the reliability of any information they read online.

Yes, some sites do give misinformation but if you stick to the NHS site or the Mayo Clinic or Cleveland Hospital in the US, you can get very useful information.

Treating us like idiots or children in the information age

I can assure you that when it comes to unnecessary alarm and worry try dealing with being misdiagnosed twice in three months by a doctor who kept insisting I had had TIAs when I hadn't. I lived in pain for a year and finally had to go privately to get my condition correctly diagnosed and treated and confirmed as not being a stroke.

Franbern. PLEASE do NOT google. I really do think that so-called Dr Google should be totally banned. Often gives completely misinformation, nearly always causes unnecessary alarm and worries . Talk to your GP,
If only I had your faith in the medical profession
In 2020 I say my doctor several time. He. Told me I ha polymyalgia rheumatica even though my symptoms didn’t really fit the bill. I was taken into A&E by ambulance with extreme chest pain. I was kept over night before being discharged and told I had mild angina. A few days latter different GP sent me in again. They were about to discharge me again Husband Googled my symptoms and suggested I had a a discected aorta. It turned out he was correct. A short while I had open heart surgery to fix it. Without Dr Google I would probably be dead

I just saw this and really hope he's managed to turn a corner by now. Four weeks of that is exhausting and leaves the system completely y depleted.

To help the gut settle down and stop the irritation, I used ENTEROSGEL to pull out any leftover toxins that keep the cycle going. Keeping meals very small and bland for a while helps too.

I had similar symptoms at the end of November. I didn't suffer nausea but I had diarrhoea, it was so bad I couldn't leave the house. I wondered about food poisoning as the diarrhoea began while we were staying in a hotel in Morecambe.
I saw my GP and sent stool samples to the surgery and the bowel screening people. All results came back normal.
It settled down after about four weeks and now I'm back to my usual self.

crazyH

I had similar symptoms for about 2 weeks - nausea and severe dysentery (with blood) - turned out to be a bad case of food poisoning ..

I had something a bit similar.

Sometime later, I was being tested for something else, and a locum docotr[well not a usual doctor from the surgery] decided to give me a whole gammut of tests.

It actually discovered an unusual something[i will cm you and anyone else who wants to know]symptom.
Government notifiable as it happens.

My point being, it would not have been discovered if a. i had something else wrong with me[probably unrelated to what was found, and b. it was different tests, including a more wide ranging stool test.

If it started with gastroenteritis it could be that his gut is damaged, I had a friend who had similar symptoms who had become dairy intolerant due to the gastroenteritis. She gave dairy up for a few weeks and took probiotics which resolved it.

Poor man .
I wonder if it is the Norovrus though four weeks is a long time to have it .
Is your husband immuno suppressed ?
Could he have developed a sudden food intolerance ?
As we age some of us lack the enzymes to cope with lactose and gluten .
Could he have developed chronic IBS or Crohns or diverticulitis?
Can you keep a food diary to see if there's a pattern ?
Only GP can diagnose the problem and he may need tests in hospital.

I hope that he gets better soon .

PLEASE do NOT google. I really do think that so-called Dr Google should be totally banned. Often gives completely misinformation, nearly always causes unnecessary alarm and worries . Talk to your GP,

Thank you for your concern. He isn't taking anything for stomach acid and hasn't recently taken antibiotics. I don't know, but I would have thought Norovirus would show up in his stool sample? I'll have to Google.

Has he had a course of antibiotics?

If so these can cause awful problems in the gut.

Too much fibre will exacerbate the symptoms the FOD diet is probably best until a diagnosis.

Is he by any chance taking Omezaprazole or Emazoprazole for stomach acid/regurgitation pain. Long term use can cause these type of problems and maybe coukd missed as a cause

Hasn't Norovirus been going round recently? That can be very nasty.

I hope your GP can find the cause of these symptoms and offer some interim treatment while arranging for various tests to be done.

Yes he’s taking electrolytes. This upset has also affected his INR readings (he is on warfarin for life after two DVTs many years ago). They should be in the region of 2.4 - 2.7 but have jumped to 7.3. He’s not taking his warfarin for a few days until the readings settle and is eating plenty of green vegetables as advised by his GP. Yes, we feel a colonoscopy is necessary.

When my H had the same symptoms he was sent for tests which just now I can’t remember, it wasn’t a colonoscopy but he had to take the same clearing meds.
He was diagnosed with Diverticulitis which occasionally reared its head all the rest of his life.

The next test should be a colonoscopy.
Is your husband taking electrolytes ?
If you’re unable to get electrolytes the water from boiled rice will help.

I had similar symptoms for about 2 weeks - nausea and severe dysentery (with blood) - turned out to be a bad case of food poisoning ..

We are just starting to feel better after more than 3 weeks ill, different symptoms, but sometimes these things drag on.

You are seeing the doctor tomorrow so can discuss but you can take comfort that the bloods etc came back ok. Make sure he is drinking enough to compensate for the loss of fluids.
Hope he feels better soon.