So, I have gastroparesis.
Let me start over. I’ve been feeling sick to my stomach since September. For the first couple of weeks I imagined this was an early sign of pregnancy. Once that was clearly out of the question I went to my doctor. We did a long series of tests on me and it seemed I had acid reflux. The only problem was most reflux medicines made me feel worse. Nothing really made it go away but finally a gastric emptying scan revealed that my stomach took a really long time to empty, indicative of gastroparesis. We really don’t know why this problem occurred as it usually accompanies diabetes which I don’t have. I’m pissed off that it took so many doctors so long to learn this, but at least I have a name to use other than freakin-living-hell-my-stomach-hurts-all-the-time-for-no-goddam-reason.
So far I still haven’t gotten totally better. I eat very tiny meals now which is supposed to help. Most of the time I feel decent but occasionally I have bad days where I feel terrible again.
There are still a couple of medicines I’m going to try and hopefully I can get all the way better. Right now I am managing it just with diet. The one bad thing is I seem to be slowly losing weight and I’m convinced my chin is getting pointy and that my cheekbones stick out. Another weird thing is that I sometimes have headaches that coincide with stomach ache from the gastroparesis, but do not happen every time my stomach hurts. This is becoming a pain in the neck (literally!) and I’m not sure how to remedy it since whatever I put in my mouth tends to make my stomach hurt a little, especially pain medications. We’ll have to work on that with my several doctors.
At work I have to take two short dinner breaks instead of one full length break, but at least they’re being flexible about it. Right now here are the foods I eat:
milk, crackers, cereal, crackery products, sugars, chocolate, and some easy proteins like eggs or chicken. I try to work in a little bit of fruit and one vegetable if I can, but it’s hard finding ones that don’t bother me. I have bad days too where almost nothing I eat is good to me. I am not able to eat popcorn, yogurt, salad, or cheese except in very small amounts. I am still experimenting. If the new drugs fix me, maybe I won’t have to experiment any more and can go back to eating most things without a problem.