For 7 weeks now, I've had some kind of weird ... condition. Severe abdominal pain woke me that night at about 3am. I thought I must have food poisoning, got up, threw up. In retrospect, what I was feeling was not nausea, but it's hard to tell sometimes with such pain, and I thought it was a sensible course of action.
The next morning I felt mostly ok. I could eat. I had no symptoms of food poisoning. That night, pain set in an hour after dinner. The same pain: in the upper abdomen, sometimes a feeling of tightness on the right side, sometimes with a pulsing of the abdomen, accompanied by chills from time to time. Then the next day. Then the next.
That weekend I got to the point where I thought I should go to Urgent Care. I was up all night with severe pain. They x-rayed me, gave me an antacid cocktail, and sent me on my way. Never mind that the cocktail didn't stop my pain.
I survived the weekend until my appointment with my usual doctor at the campus clinic. He stated that I probably had gastritis or a peptic ulcer, and gave me prilosec and pepcid. He screened for H pylori, which was negative. I started the medication, to little avail. Even on a rather limited diet (think chicken, bread, veggies, and water), I was still having pain every night. Even after doubling both dosages, my pain was roughly the same.
When, a week into treatment, it was clear that I wasn't getting better, the doctor referred me to a gastroenterologist. The insurance company gave me a short list of local GI specialists, all of whom were booked for months except one. Thus, he became my doctor. While waiting for the appointment, I had my regular doctor screen for pancreatitis with a blood test, which was negative.
A few days later, I was sitting on a bed in the gastroenterologist's exam room. He entered the room, and indicated that I should walk across the room and sit in a chair that was there, so that he could sit in a chair near the door. He wanted me to be as far from him as possible, evidently. What followed was not really an exam, but a short question and answer session. He glanced at my chart, test results, and ordered an endoscopy and ultrasound.
The endoscopy went fairly smoothly. It was scheduled for the following morning, so no long waits. I went in, they inserted an IV, pushed a general anaesthetic, shoved cameras and tools down my throat. I woke up with a sore throat and a hiccup that would last several hours, but all-in-all it wasn't a bad experience. The nurse told me (I did not see the doctor after the procedure) that they saw no cancer and no ulcer. They did a biopsy for H pylori, in case the blood test had just failed due to a lack of antibodies in my blood. I found out a week later that that biopsy was negative.
At each stage, of course, I hoped that they would find something. It seems odd to be praying that you have an ulcer, a bacterial infection, or even pancreatitis, but actually anything treatable is better than a mystery. If it's a mystery all they say is "go home and tough it out." The ultrasound came and went, almost 2 weeks ago. I get the results on Tuesday. I thought of urinary tract infection, and visited my doctor who did a urine test, but of course it was negative.
Then something really shitty happened. I started to feel kind of better. I could eat sugary stuff. I had a hamburger, and some french fries, with little to no pain. I went almost a week with no problems. Until tonight. Ice cream, which had never caused a problem before, and here I am up at 4 am writing this blog post in pain instead of sleeping.
Did ice cream cause it? Is food involved? Neither antacids nor tylenol seem to help 100% of the time. One or the other seem to help, but it's difficult to say. Then one starts to get ideas. Maybe it's an aortic aneurism! I feel a pulsing! But it's improbable, and likely the internet is just scaring me. Looking up one's ailments seems like a comfort until you hit the search button on google. Then you just start being terrified at all the ways you might be dying. You think, "well, yes these ailments are rare for someone my age, but so is chronic abdominal pain." Suddenly, in light of your obvious pain, unlikely conditions seem entirely plausible.
I fear that when I finally see the gastroenterologist again, in 3 days, 4 weeks after my first visit, that he's just going to say that it's a mystery. By then they will have probably ruled out gallstones and aortic aneurism with ultrasound. In that case, I will have to content myself with my present condition of only 1-2 bad days every week, and hopefully I can keep my weight steady at 137, down 10 lbs from where I started but 5 pounds heavier than my lowest during this ordeal.
Yeah. I don't have any cute or clever way to finish this. I hurt and I'm scared. Just thought some people might want to know.
