Where have I been?

In case you are all worried about where your faithful blogger has been - well, I've been sick. Not just the "I have a bad cold" kind of sick, but really sick. Possibly permanently.

Gastroparesis

That's what they call in. I am still waiting for that diagnosis to be confirmed with one more test but I and my gastroenterologist (GI) are fairly certain.

Since the symptoms of this aren't something your bring up in polite conversation I haven't really shared this with anyone. But since mid-September I have been getting sick (throwing up) daily. When it first started I also had vertigo. At first I thought that perhaps I was (improbably) pregnant. I'm not. When that was ruled out we suspected it might be my gallbladder. I did have a gallstone and had a history of a poorly functioning gallbladder. So I had it taken out in December. That didn't help. In Oct/Nov I started getting random quick feelings of numbness/tingling. That combined with the vertigo got my brain all riled up thinking it could be MS. None of the doctors think that is the case. I will have an MRI in a few weeks to definitively rule it out but I'm not too worried. I suspected a hormone imbalance since the feeling was similar to my pregnancies. That was also ruled out.

I finally got in to see a GI last week (a fellow Domer - hooray!) and he confirmed my suspicion that this is likely a problem with how quickly my stomach empties. Basically, there is a nerve (vagus nerve) that tells your stomach when to contract and push food through to the small intestine. Sometimes that nerve gets damaged. It happens a lot in people with diabetes (ruled out for me). In the rest of the cases, they don't usually know what causes it. Those cases are called idiopathic gastroparesis. That's me.

They did an endoscopy to rule out any kind of blockage in my upper GI tract. All clear. But they did find some esophagits (inflammation of the esphogous - probably from vomiting so much the last 3 years) and found that my stomach still held food from 6 hours before and had limited motility (movement). I go back this week for a gastric emptying study. I will get to eat some (low-dose) radioactive food and they will check how quickly it passes through. If it takes 4 hours or more then the diagnosis of gastroparesis will likely be confirmed.

Treatment options - none of them are really making me jump for joy. There are some medications I will start trying after the GES. Hopefully those combined with changing my eating habits to have more frequent, smaller meals will help the symptoms. But there is no known cure of which I am yet aware.

If you are the praying sort, please pray that
1. God will heal my body
2. I will have the emotional strength to deal with the repercussions of all of this

If you are not a praying person, I encourage you to think about starting. God is waiting for you!