From my experience, IBS is both about diet and anxiety.

Obviously not eating isn’t going to help. You’ll have to learn what foods set you off and limit or eliminate those from your diet. (For me it’s raw onions and overly starchy foods.)

But I believe your condition is fueled more by your anxiety and depression.

I can’t really help you there other than to say that controlled breathing exercises seem to be helping me. I often take cold showers when in an IBS attack that has verged into being a panic attack, but in that cold shower I realized I focus on my breathing.

My background is that I knew I had IBS but it was getting out of control. It turned out I had a hernia that was causing an occasional intestinal blockage. Once that was fixed, my IBS started to slowly improve.

It should’ve been massively better, but I had been training myself to be anxious each morning, worrying whether I’d be able to function at all.

I had to unlearn that worry… and it took a long time.

I dunno that I can give you advice on making friends. I am lucky to have a very good core support group of friends who have been with me through the last twenty-some years. We are all middle-aged dudes now, with our own complicated lives, but we still get together for board games, d&d, and chat on a discord all the time.

There was a time when we grew apart a bit. (We are stoners and one of our rowdier friends went to jail.)

I called a few together for a board game night, and it stuck. If I had not done that, we would almost certainly not still be in each other’s lives.

So find some friends and keep them close. It is very hard to get through life alone, as you know. It takes hard work to make and maintain these relationships, but they are necessary.

And finally, our eldest, Miles Morales, who didn’t really wanna cooperate. The rest willingly hopped into the circle on a square, as most cats will.

And Abed Nadir!

And this is Troy Barnes.

My wife was going under for minor surgery and wanted to ask if any of the staff were watching Game of Thrones. (which hadn’t gotten bad yet)

Apparently she crooked out Game of Thrones! and then passed out.

Whatever you do or say… you do or say. And this is their everyday job, you aren’t going to offend anyone. The worst you can do is give someone a good story.

But more to the point, those drugs remove your filter for a moment. It’s not your fault.

As for the rest, I cannot say. Some things you have to take a deep breath and accept that it’s out of your control. You cannot change the reactions of others. Will your family coddle you? Or are they going to show you that they love and care about you during a rough time? How are those necessarily different?

I hope it all goes well for you. It sounds routine, so there’s that, and then hopefully your symptoms abate.

I am on the spectrum but not diagnosed. I’ve only had anesthesia a few times in my life and have no idea what I said or did when I went under.

I worried more about the after effects and healing, and everything went smoothly. Just for what its worth from one overthinker to another.

My wife and I took in five kittens for a weekend. I insisted we keep one as my Dad was keeping another.

My wife insists this is a foster fail, but I maintain it was four foster successes!

Fluffy kitten tax. This is Mary Jane, supposed to be Peter Parker but my vet tech wife failed to correctly determine gender that weekend:

Maybe, just maybe, they’re so incompetent that they get the phrase wrong and accidentally win?

I think that, in the process, you’ll be creating enough Gilbert Gottfried impersonators that they couldn’t all be low-quality any longer.

Just one little hitch in your otherwise flawless plan.