Comments on: Gastroparesis Awareness Month: A Day In The Life

By: sojournerstentpress

sojournerstentpress — Fri, 18 Nov 2016 01:35:08 +0000

I’ve had all of these symptoms plus another thing: AWFUL smelling burps, like rotten eggs, like the worst fart you could imagine combined with upper quadrant abdominal pain so severe I would be crying out loudly and clawing at the couch, only able to sleep sitting up for any amount of relief. Then, within about, oh I say 30 after minutes of that, I would begin vomiting up undigested food that smelled rotten like my burps, accompanied by squirting sounds loud enough for my friend to hear, the sensation of squirting into my lower intestine (was that bile or diarreah?) and THEN the diarreah would start up. I would be going on and on like this until severely dehydrated and needing IV fluids. in 2 months I lost 50 pounds. The doctors handled this very poorly. I am on medicaid. I also have communication problems. I am on the spectrum and have ticks and stims that have had ER staff initially thinking I am drug seeking (opiates or morphine) when all I want is them to get the vomiting to stop and figure out what is wrong (it is horrifying!). I get manhandled by nurses (though there are a few kind ones here and there). I found this post very informative. I wonder why my GI doctor didnt follow through with the gastric emptying test he was going to run though. I’m disheartened.

By: kisa

kisa — Sun, 22 Feb 2015 05:22:40 +0000

Thank you

By: runsquidling

runsquidling — Sun, 24 Aug 2014 02:39:56 +0000

Awareness is definitely important, especially for diseases even doctors don’t know that much about, and as far as awareness goes the only problem I have with it is that posting “[disease] AWARENESS MONTH!!!” all over Facebook does not raise awareness–I scroll and don’t usually google it unless it’s an interesting enough name. Awareness not raised.

But after reading this, I actually do know significantly more about gastroparesis than I did a few minutes ago. “This is [thing] and this is how my life with [thing] looks” raises the kind of awareness that a WebMD link could never approach. Also it’s storytelling and I’m a fan of storytelling just on principle.

So anyway this was really cool to read and if I develop gastroparesis somehow/meet someone who has it, I’ll at least know what it is/won’t need them to explain it, which I’m sure gets tiresome.