viral stomach bug thing - how long can I expect it too last?

[Lynsy]

Hello

Friday last week I started having gripey stomach cramps that were about every 15 minutes throughout the day, but only lasted about 15 seconds, seemed worse when I ate. On saturday I had diarrhoea and still the stomach cramps/pain. So on sunday decided to eat plain food all day, did the same most the day monday then had dinner in the evening which went straight through me and had to get up in the night aswell. So went to GP yesterday and he said to avoid dairy for a couple of weeks and eat bland food, probably just a virus, (had gastroenteritis 5 weeks ago) so yesterday I ate muffin with jam no butter, vegetable soup and dry bread for lunch then rice, chicken and vegetables for dinner and only drank water. This morning when I went to the toilet was still very loose (sorry tmi) but less than before, so again for breakfast i had a muffin with jam, at lunch I had plain tuna in a roll with cucumber, been drinking nothing but water, but about an hour ago after taking some paracetamol got the urge to go to the toilet again and had diarrhoea,so gave in and took some immodium. I do not have the urge to go the toilet everytime I eat and am probably having one attack of diarrhoea in a day, but how long can I expect this too last, and continue to eat nothing of great substance, I do have an appetite and don't feel unwell in myself, but this is really getting me down - Have been on and off ill since last Septemeber and each time finding it harder to keep positive.

Any advice help would be great.

Thanks

You poor thing.I had something like this a while back and still had diarrhoea 10 days later.The Dr said it can take some time for the gut to get back to normal after a virus.I ate some of those probiotic yogurt things which helped.

The dd's are normally the culprits in passing stuff on to us,so I make them eat those jelly vitamin sweets now,after getting 2 bugs in 8 weeks I'd had enough lurgies to last me a lifetime!

Hope you feel better soon.

Thanks so much for your reply, just so hard to know what to do/eat for the best, and how long to do it for. I feel for anybody that suffers with diarrhoea as I have only had 5 days and already feel that it is stopping me from doing things. I am sure like you say it has something to do with dd, although niether her or dp have caught it from me, but think it could have been something I picked up from nursery as always signs saying that there are bugs going around.

Will try thr probiotic yoghurts, actually will try anything

Thanks again

I just got over exactly this. It lasted 12 days and I ended up having blood tests at the GP as I thought it must be something really bad as it just wasn't going and none of the rest of my family had it. In the end though, it really was just a virus. I even had terrible joint pain as a result of it for 4 days which apparantly can happen after a virus. I posted on here about it last week as I was so worried and fed up. I too did the bland diet thing and still had a very loose and explosive bm once a day. I was very weak from eating such a nutritionally poor diet. However, it did just go on its own in the end.