Moving along

My last post got lots of views but zero comments.  Do you all not like talking about vomit or something?

Life continues to go forward as I work on learning how to deal with this chronic illness.  No return visits to the ER -- yay! -- but the last several days have been very blah, culminating in -- spoiler alert! -- a quick tossing of my cookies.  I think it was the high carb lunch that tipped the scales.  Low carb is what I need to do.  What I will do.

Because of the major blahs, I decided not to try to pull a 15K out of my ass and handed off my Shamrock bib to someone else this year.  Who may become a new running buddy so that's nice!  She's slow like me and lives very close.  I was sad not to be doing my fifth Shamrock race though.  Speaking of running, yes I plan to begin again as I still have April and May races on my calendar.  I feel better today than I have in about a week so finger crossed that that feeling sticks.  One of the more bizarre aspects of this gastroparesis thing is that I can be stuffed and starving at the same time.  I have to listen to the stuffed feeling over the starving feeling, else bad things happen.  I keep telling myself I can have more to eat later if I'm still hungry.  Usually though the stuffed feeling fades and so does the hunger if I do it right, leaving me just right in terms of what my stomach can handle without reversing the process.

I have to admit, it is nice to have a real live medical reason not to be eating a lot of vegetables and fruit.  "No, no salad for me -- doctor's orders!"  Totally wish I'd had this excuse when I was a kid.  Okay, not really.

Cheers,
the CilleyGirl

To make a long story short(ish)

Since my sinus surgery on January 7, I've been in the ER twice and the hospital for three days.  Chronic nausea and vomiting that led to the natural conclusion of severe dehydration and electrolyte imbalance.  I've got prescriptions for four different anti-nausea meds.  I've been tested from stem to stern and back again.  I've finally stopped looking like a junkie from IVs and repeated blood draws, including one just above my ankle.  Little tip:  If they ever want to put an IV in the underside of your wrist, beg them to find another spot.  It not only hurts like hell, visually it's creepy as all get out.

My primary care physician is fabulous -- she spent an hour with me going over everything, immediately scheduled two more tests to rule out a couple more things they had yet to test for, and when that came back normal immediately got me in for a GI consult.  He was fabulous too -- not only went over the novel that my medical history is by this point, but went back two years in my medical history, then immediately scheduled me for an upper GI endoscopy.  That's where they put a camera down your throat to see what your stomach is up to.  Kind of like a colonoscopy, but from the other end.  This was Monday.

By the end of it, I finally had what they think is the answer.  The fancy name is gastroparesis.  The layman's term is lazy stomach.  Basically, my stomach is not emptying as fast as it should.  For example, after you eat your stomach muscles should be processing then pushing out everything in like an hour or so.  I had last eaten about 12 hours before they did the endoscopy and last drank some water close to five hours prior.  During the scope, my stomach was still about half full of water plus I still had parts of last night's dinner in there.

In doing research -- which I'm still doing, and I'm going to write down questions for follow up with my GI -- it seems that thankfully I may have a mild case, at least now that the attacks seem to have stopped.  Knock on wood.  (Knock on lots of wood!  Twenty four hours of straight nausea sucks rocks, let's me tell you.)  But I also think I've had a very mild case for at least two years or so.  That was about the time my appetite changed, that I got full fairly quickly while eating, and random bouts of nausea with rare instances of vomiting.  By the way, I hope nobody is eating while reading this.  They took some biopsies during the endoscopy which showed inflammation.  So I really need to make some diet changes to manage this and prevent future attacks.  And strong memories of constant nausea and vomiting really inspire you to make changes in your life.  Ironically, it needs to be a low fat, low fiber diet.  Meaning, very few raw veggies.  I was treating this without even knowing it!  Cooked veggies, little or no peels on fruit or veg, lean protein.  Sounds to me like paleo/primal with a few adjustments in how things are prepared.  At least I know how to do that!

And how is your 2014 going?

Cheers,
the CilleyGirl