Seventy-three days

...is how many days per year that IBS patients report "restricted activity" due to their symptoms. When presented with a hypothetical drug that would make them symptom-free but shorten their lives overall, they would also give up 25% of their remaining years of life in order to be free of IBS. (Click here to read the survey by the UNC Center for Functional GI and Motility Disorders.)

WHOA. Let's just take a second here. First of all: 73 days!!! Let's say we took all 73 days in a row. That's over 2 months! If your friend wasn't feeling well for over 2 months, would you find that strange? Terrible?!

The reality, of course, is that these 73 days are experienced throughout a year; sometimes there are little clusters of bad days and clusters of good, sometimes they are sporadic. That means that throughout a typical year, we are wrestling with these symptoms on a regular basis.

It's no wonder, then, that patients with IBS are so desperate for relief from their symptoms that they would give up 25% of their remaining lives to be free of this disease. That means that if you're 50 now, and your life expectancy is around 85, you would cut your life short by NINE YEARS.

Often I have felt that, because IBS is a "functional disorder," I have not been treated seriously by doctors and/or specialists. I have been told to "try to relax" and "eat more salad" [don't even get me started on that one right now]. A few of the more sensitive doctors I've seen said "Hopefully this drug will help, but this is a very tricky disease and there is no cure."

True, we won't die from this disease. True, it won't lead to other diseases like cancer that could kill me. But please, can we make IBS a priority??? Seventy-three days, people! Nine years, people!

We need to take a minute in our entirely-rushed medical appointments to say: "This disease is really affecting my life in a huge way." Maybe you can give an example of how it affects you, say that time you had to run out of your presentation to go to the bathroom, or you missed your daughter's soccer game, or you had to pass on that holiday dinner.

It's advocacy on the most personal, basic level, and it can be very effective. IBS is one of the most commonly seen diseases in a primary care physician's office. Imagine if every IBS patient took a moment to explain to his doctor that this disease is preventing him from living his life!

If you have performed this kind of advocacy in your doctor's office, I salute you, sir or ma'am! Please comment below on any effective words, phrases, or techniques you've used to get your point across.