Consultants diagnosed renal cancer and were ready to rip out my kidney – then I discovered I had IBS
Dr Vernon Coleman
For several months I had a persistent, nagging pain in my back. It was just about in the region of my right kidney. It didn't seem to be getting any worse but it certainly wasn't getting any better.
For a while I managed to convince myself that it was nothing more than a muscular backache caused by crouching over a typewriter.
But then I noticed two additional symptoms.
I started feeling constantly `full' – as though I had just eaten a large meal – and I found myself visiting the lavatory more often than I found entirely convenient.
When I told my general practitioner he took a routine urine sample.
And found blood.
The next step was a hospital appointment.
The ultrasound pictures showed a rather mis-shapen kidney. And more specialist X-ray pictures confirmed that there was something wrong. My kidney looked as though it were auditioning for a part as the hunchback of Notre Dame.
Unhappily, however, the radiologists couldn't get a really good view of my kidney. Their view was obscured by large bubbles of inconvenient gas lurking around in the coiled nooks and crannies of my intestinal loops.
Nevertheless, cancer was the diagnosis.
So I demanded (and was given) an appointment to go to another, larger, city hospital for even more sophisticated tests. It was all very worrying. I knew that the doctors who had examined me suspected the worst. And without anyone saying anything I knew exactly how bad the worst could be. Very bad.
I breathed a huge sigh of relief when the kindly radiologist at the large city hospital told me that there was nothing seriously wrong with my kidney. It was, he assured me, mis-shapen but perfectly healthy.
And so, after racing up to Bristol to record a couple of TV programmes, and hurtling back home to write a column, I set off, as I had previously planned, to Paris.
On the plane flying over the Channel the pain in my back got much, much worse.
And I suddenly realised what was wrong.
The gas that the radiologist had spotted in my intestines had expanded because of the change in air pressure and it was the gas that was causing my pain.
But it was, I suddenly realised, the gas that was also making me feel `full' all the time.
And irritating my bowel and my bladder.
And pressing on my kidney and causing the bleeding. (I reported this incident to one of the medical journals since it was the first time anyone had realised that the wind of IBS could cause minor kidney damage.)
There was only one explanation for this apparently bizarre set of circumstances.
I had irritable bowel syndrome.
The moment I made the diagnosis I realised just why I had acquired this most common of twenty-first century disorders.
First, I had been putting myself under an enormous amount of stress. For years I had run a series of passionate campaigns designed to spread the truth and oppose those parts of the medical establishment with which I disagreed. I had, for years, been spending at least twelve hours a day on my campaigns.
Second, I had changed my diet. When I had, a few years earlier, decided to become a vegetarian I had cut out meat and fish and increased the quantity of vegetables and cereals. I had also started eating a lot of cheese and cheese based dishes. When in a rush I would make myself a cheese sandwich for lunch.
In order to control my irritable bowel syndrome I had to learn to control my exposure to stress (and my own reaction to the inevitable stress in my life) and I had to learn to change my diet again.
Eventually, after much trial and error, I succeeded in making the changes which brought my irritable bowel syndrome under control. And the techniques I discovered and developed really do work. I don't believe that irritable bowel syndrome can be cured (in the same way that a broken leg can be cured) because the weakness and susceptibility will remain. The symptoms of irritable bowel syndrome still trouble me occasionally – but mainly if I have eaten unwisely or been under an unusual amount of stress.
My book `Relief from IBS (Revised Edition)’ contains the information I have used to help myself deal with my symptoms. Everything I know about IBS is in these pages. I hope and believe that the advice and information I've accumulated will also help you. For details of the book please CLICK HERE
Copyright Vernon Coleman January 2026
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