u/made-in-the-eighties

A little background.
I’ve had what I thought was IBS for years.

About two years ago I started struggling to swallow food - always the same types of stuff - On reflection it’s ironically all stuff that would contain gluten. Had the camera down, they took biopsies, confirmed it was EOE. Told it was likely due to an allergy or intolerance but they didn’t try to diagnose what. Gave me some steroids and it got better but never fully went away and I’ve just learned to live with it.

The back end of last year I tried the carnivore diet for a little bit and felt AMAZING. Looking back I’m wondering if that was due to the lack of gluten.

This year my IBS has gradually got worse and then 3 weeks ago I became very unwell.

Pooping blood. Bad diarrhea. Bloating. Gas. No energy. Bad abdominal pain. Night sweats. Brain fog. Skin issues.

Went to doctors. They took various stool and blood samples. Stool sample came back saying my elastase level was 101. Anything lower than 100 is classed as severe pancreatic deficiency. In the blood tests they had requested the tTG one that checks for Coeliac. The results never came back.

So I was sent for a second lot of blood tests. Checking I wasn’t diabetic and checking for heart disease etc. Another blood test for Coeliac was requested.

Again the results never came back.

Drs surgery has rang the labs and nobody seems to know what’s going on, where my samples went and why the Coeliac tests never happened. All my other tests results came back. Just not the Coeliac ones.

So tomorrow I have to go have a third lot of blood taken!!
And to top it off I then don’t get to see the doctor to talk about the next steps till the 26th! That’s over 2 weeks away.

That will take us to 5 weeks since I first contacted them. Bearing in mind that I feel like death, am off work on the sick (full sick pay thankfully) and I’m losing weight every day now.

Just feels like there is no end in sight.

Hi everyone

38yo male here. Long story short I’ve had what I’ve thought is IBS for over 10 years now which has been getting worse the last 6 months. The last two weeks I’ve been incredibly poorly.
Pooping blood, constant diarrhoea, severe abdominal pain and discomfort, low energy etc.

My GP ran some blood and stool samples and the stool sample came back as showing low elastace which suggests a pancreas issue (which can be caused by bowel diseases).

They’re now running more tests and one of them is listed as for checking for coeliac disease on the paperwork.

After googling the disease it makes SO much sense and I suspect this is what I have.
A year or two ago I was also diagnosed with EOE which was suggested could be due to an allergy or intolerance. I’ve read online that EOE and Coeliac go hand in hand as they can both have the same trigger.

My question is this -
Is it possible to get diagnosed with coeliac disease without having to have the camera down your throat?
The reason I ask is that I had to have the camera down and they took biopsies from in my oesophagus when they diagnosed me with EOE. I made the mistake of having it done without sedation and it was pretty traumatic so the thought of having it done again is somewhat horrifying.

I’ve read online that since covid they can diagnose it without the camera and I was just wondering what other people who are recently diagnosed experiences have been?