Ugh. I could REALLY use some advice/perspective.
I don't know if I told the whole story of my stomach pain, but here's the (brief) backstory: I've been having intermittent stabby stomach pain for about 3 months. It's VERY different from my IBS pain. I saw a nurse practitioner at Awesome Doctor's practice, and she thought it was my gallbladder, even though the pain was on the wrong side, and ordered a CT scan. That came back totally normal, and so she referred me to a gastroenterologist. In the meantime, 7 days ago I started taking Nexium because I really started to think this was maybe an ulcer. And as of today, the pain is 95%-98% better.
I saw the gastroenterologist today, and he spent most of the time focused on my IBS, even though I told him that my IBS meds didn't help the stabby pain but I told him clearly that 7 days of Nexium reduced the pain by 95%. He wants me to have an endoscopy for the stomach pain and then decided I should have a colonoscopy, too, "because of the IBS."
I cannot state this clearly enough: my IBS is NOT A PROBLEM right now. It's not flaring up. I feel like this doctor didn't even listen to me. He would repeat (or attempt to) things back to me that I didn't even say, like (sorry) "So you're having 2-3 loose stools a day, 5 days a week." OH MY GOD I DID NOT SAY THAT.
So I feel like jumping to really invasive tests is overkill here. When the Nexium helped my symptoms so dramatically, I almost cancelled the appointment, but I decided that since the stomach pain lasted so long,** I should probably get a specialist's opinion. But I thought the opinion would be "Yes, keep taking these meds for a couple of weeks so your stomach lining can heal and then we'll reevaluate." I didn't expect "Hi, I am not listening to you but I want to shove tubes into you okay bye."
So...I really don't want to schedule the endoscopy and colonoscopy right now. But is that stupid? I feel like his recommendation was based on a serious misunderstanding of my medical history. I'd really rather just keep taking Nexium for another couple of weeks and then reevaluate.
**(And, okay, the stomach pain lasted so long because I didn't treat it with the right medication until a week ago. The fact that it responded so rapidly to meds seems like a good sign.)