Understanding New and Severe Abdominal Pain

Your symptoms are very suggestive for inflammation or irritation within the colon. Your doctor may consider infections as a source of this inflammation (such as salmonella, shigella, or antibiotic-associated diarrhea, which is an infection with Clostridium difficile bacteria) or your doctor may suspect an autoimmune source of inflammation. In the autoimmune condition "Crohn's disease," your immune system attacks your own bowel, causing inflammation.

If you have mucus but no blood in your stools, it is also possible that you are experiencing an "irritable bowel."