When I heard Rep. John Campbell had to have part of his colon snipped I winced like most folks, but let me tell you I may empathize more than some.

For about 10 years, I was misdiagnosed with a peptic ulcer. The real cause was a bacterial infection commonly known as “h. pylori,” a malady that can be basically cleared up with a two-week dose of antibiotics and Prilosec or Prevacid.

I started having nearly crippling stomachaches in early 1991. It was so bad that I had to sometimes call in sick to work and since I almost never do that it greatly concerned me. One night I recall the pain was so bad and so relentless I dragged myself out of bed, hobbled to my car and drove myself to the emergency room. They couldn’t find anything immediately wrong, but gave me some muscle relaxants, which greatly helped. I was under a lot of stress at the time and no matter what type of ulcer you have stress exacerbates the condition. I was stressed out because I got jumped by a couple of muggers outside the vestibule of the apartment building where I lived. A mugging is bad enough, but this pair also tried to rape me. As one of my attackers forced me to the floor, hinting he had a weapon I sensed he was going to assault me so I made up my mind right then that I would rather die than let them do that to me. I knew that fighting back was one of the best defenses against rape so I jumped up, hollered for help and started fighting. They ran off. Unfortunately, the police were never able to catch them, but I was brought in for a line-up some time later as there was a rash of these types of sexual assaults in the area. Sadly, it wasn’t just limited to my attackers as they were not in the line-up.

Anyway, I had been reassigned to the overnight shift at this time and you can imagine that going to work in the middle of the night was a hairy experience. The neighborhood wasn’t too safe at that time.

Eventually, I found a doctor near work in downtown Chicago. He seemed like such a nice, grandfatherly type with a terrific bedside manner. And when I say grandfatherly I mean he reminded me sometimes — as he shuffled through his office stooped over — of the character Tim Conway played sometimes on the old Carol Burnett show. He also prescribed muscle relaxants, which seemed to help. But still, always such chronic pain. And after awhile it started to dawn on me he might not be the greatest gastroenterologist in the world. I thought highly of his partner, though, and started to schedule appointments when I knew he would be there instead.

Eventually, I moved to California in the fall of 1998. The pain just grew, but since I didn’t have health insurance and was unemployed for a spell I just learned to cope. When I started working for the Times I got health benefits and went right to the doctor. The pain worsened. My doctor in Chicago had diagnosed me with a peptic ulcer so I basically just took Prevacid to control it. He had me do a blood test for h. pylori, but it came up negative. The first doctor I saw in California did the same thing with the same result. So I continued to suffer.

Finally, my primary-care physician directed me to a new expert after they ran out of answers. He scheduled me for an endoscopy and colonoscopy.  I had endoscopies before in Chicago, but all they showed was I had ulcers so I didn’t understand the need for a colonoscopy. I was in so much pain I wasn’t about to argue at this point. Sure, try anything, I thought. I remember confessing to my new doctor that I dreaded yet another endoscopy, which is a procedure in which the physicians guide a camera down your esophagus and into the stomach, because I’d always suffer terrible sore throats afterward. He didn’t understand. That shouldn’t happen, he said. If you do the procedure correctly there should be no side effects. He was right. Afterward I felt fine. My Chicago doctor didn’t have the right touch, it seemed.

Then my new doctor got the lab results back. I had h. pylori. Two weeks of medicine and I’d be fine. I was stunned. But why didn’t any of those other tests reveal that? He said the difference this time was that he had ordered a culture from my colon, which was sent to the lab. That initial test also came back negative, but the doctor was insistent. Check it again. They did and it came back positive. But why, I asked? Because like any living organism its first duty is to survive and it had colonized in my system — in other words, it found a very safe place to hide and didn’t want to be bothered.

I still have to watch what I eat because food with dairy or eggs will sicken me, but otherwise I’m fine now.

Interestingly enough, when I started thinking of writing about this I googled my Chicago doctor to see, I hate to say this, if he were still alive. He was quite elderly when I used to see him. I found to my surprise that his license had been revoked.

But before I get to that bizarre story, let me tell you another one regarding my Chicago stomach doctor. In June 2003 when I was the city editor of one of our papers in Claremont and Upland I was trying to call a local wedding planner that apparently had moved or failed so the number was reassigned. Turns out my doctor had moved to Upland and was getting my messages. He called me back and I started putting it together. What a coincidence! I wrote up an amusing little column about it and a short time later I had dinner with him and his wife. I told him about the h. pylori business and that I was much better now and he acknowledged how there had been so much more research on that lately. In his defense, I’ll say that when I was going to see him initially the research on h.pylori was relatively new. The discovery that bacteria causes up to 80% of ulcers was basically discovered in 1982 by a pair of Australian physicians who later went on to win the Nobel Prize in 2005 for their research. When they first presented the theory it was ridiculed and it took awhile to be accepted.

But as I said I was checking up on my old doctor today and found he had his license revoked in 2007 because during a medical procedure known as a “sigmoidoscopy” he happened to, ahem, insert the scope in the wrong place. I think we can stop there, but I’ll add that the state records show the main problem wasn’t the mistake, but, as President Nixon found out, it was what he did afterward that got him in trouble. He was accused of lying and trying to falsify records to cover up his mistake. It seemed like such a sad story. He was basically 83, semi-retired, but still practicing medicine when he would have been better off spending his afternoons on the beach. All those decades of medicine to end so ignominiously. Oddly enough, I’ve never been angry with him, despite all those years of suffering. I always felt he was doing his best and medicine is tricky business. But now I feel sorrier for him than I ever did.

More importantly, though, I’m pulling for Campbell to get better soon. Trust me, John, I can relate.

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