My old IBS has come back and I do not know whose fault it is

Gentle with myself, finally, and I want to start where you ended rather than with the symptom.

You do not have to decide how to feel about it before the fourteenth. You are allowed to go in undecided and say exactly what you have written here — that the rest of it has been good and this one thing has come back and you are frightened of it. That is a complete and honest thing to bring.

Athlone, middle of everything. I had colitis in my twenties and I went into this year braced for exactly your situation, so I asked at the start rather than after.

What my consultant said, and I offer it as her words and not as a rule: that a history like mine did not rule anything out, but that she would want to know early if anything came back, and that early meant weeks and not months, because the useful thing was to be able to tell the difference between an old condition returning and a new side effect.

Five weeks after an increase, worse on the two days after — Pam, that pattern in a paper diary is worth more than anything anybody in here can tell you. Take the diary itself.

Two hours from the pharmacy, planning ahead always, and the toilet-mapping is a thing I have never seen anybody else describe. I do it for a different reason and I recognised it instantly.

The coach trip is the bit I would not let go. That is your life getting smaller, and it happened in about six weeks. Whatever the answer turns out to be on the fourteenth, that is the thing I would put in front of them first.

Estuary walks, named in a storm. Mine was the reverse — I had the urgent sort for the first four months and then it settled into nothing much, and my GP was fairly relaxed about it because it was improving on its own.

Improving on its own and getting worse over five weeks are different pictures and I would not want you reading my version and being reassured by it.

Marine biologist, cold water, warm circle. On the anger question, since you asked it honestly.

I spent a whole autumn angry at a medicine, and what I eventually worked out was that I was angry about not being able to trust my own body’s signals, which was true before I ever started. The medicine had not taken that from me. It had made it visible again.

Might be nothing to do with your situation. It is the only useful thing I got out of three months of being cross.

Durban. Humidity, heat, and a very good cool bag. Practical, since nobody has said it: the dread is treatable separately from the gut.

Mine was, anyway. The bowel thing was managed by a gastroenterologist over about eight months and the fear of it needed somebody else entirely, and I only worked that out when I noticed I was still mapping toilets a year after the symptoms had gone.

Went on the fourteenth. Took the diary, as Dara said, and she read four pages of it properly with her chair turned away from the computer, which I have not had happen in years.

She is referring me back to gastroenterology and has spoken to the prescriber about the dose, and the two of them are going to sort something out between them. Nobody has told me to stop and nobody has told me it is nothing.

Nolene, I have thought about your reply every day since. The dread arrived back before the symptoms did, if I am honest about the diary. That is going in the next conversation.

And I have rebooked the coach trip. Sheila has found out where the stops are.