PAIN IN LOWER LEFT QUADRANT WITH FEVER AND CHANGE IN BOWELS
Description and Possible Medical Problems
With many medical problems, we never notice that anything’s wrong until it’s too late. It can flare up—either a new condition or a familiar one we thought we were all through with—and then it’s all we think about. A problem with the intestine called diverticulitis is like that. If you have a fever and pain in your lower left quadrant and find that your bowel movements have changed—resulting in either severe, painful constipation or diarrhea—it’s possible that you have this disease.
In order to understand diverticulitis, you should first understand how the intestine works. The intestine is responsible for both the absorption of food and the disposal of the body’s metabolic waste. Since the feces can sit in the last part of the intestine for a while before being eliminated, the intestine can absorb a wide variety of toxins from the foods we eat. Our modern high-fat, low-fiber diet is frequently the cause of this disease; because the intestinal muscles don’t have to work very hard with this kind of diet, they can become weak. As a result, the intestinal wall in the lower large intestine can also become weak and form small pockets or sacs called diverticula. Diverticula usually cause no problem until they become inflamed or infected, a condition called diverticulitis. It’s believed that seeds or indigestible items such as nuts or popcorn can become stuck in these diverticula and cause an infection. If diverticulitis goes untreated, the diverticula can actually rupture like a bubble on a tire, and the contents of the intestine can spill into the sterile area of the belly, causing a severe infection similar to that caused by a ruptured appendix.
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