because it just seems to be a catch-all for when they’ve

That's exactly what it is, actually. It's a diagnosis of exclusion. Ie when you've excluded "all you can think of" (=all they can be arsed with/you can afford) and you still have symptoms, you get IBS diagnosis.

I have it as well.

But IBS is a functional disorder of the large intestine, whereas most of the bad bowel movements I have are kinda orange-ish in colour and very often float. Which lead me to finding out about steatorrhea, having too much fat in your stool. Because that is more linked with small intestine disorders, like celiacs and NCGS.

So essentially I've been hurting from this since the 80's, literally, and the doctors have always either shrugged or just plain not given a fuck. Despite almost four decades of similar symptoms. But then last year I tried an exclusion diet, just rice, fish, potato and chicken, as they're all very low on allergens, especially if you leave out garlic and onions and other allergy-triggering spices.

For meds, the best I had at one point was Litalgin, but it was banned because it lowered white cells or some such. (It was known at the time I used it, you just had to check them regularly but now you can't get it anymore.) But also now that I've mangled my ribcage last year, I got amitriptylin for my ribs and while reading about it on Wikipedia, noticed it's also used for IBS when nothing else helps. And yeah, I think I'm in less pain (from that) than I was before starting it. But it does cause me quite heavy fatigue. Like as in I didn't have anywhere to be so I slept like 14 hours.

It's just so fucking annoying when the doctors are like playing tennis

"no this is a psychiatric thing!"

"nuh-uh, it's a somatic disorder!"

"no it's not, none of the labs are positive!"

"but this guy is clearly suffering and he isn't in any significant way psychiatrically sick so it must be somatic"

"but none of the tests show anything positive so it can't be somatic and thus must be psychosomatic!"

repeat ad nauseam for about thirty years