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Have you been DIAGNOSED with a peptic ulcer?

Posted , 4 users are following.

john45567
john45567

In order to avoid possibly erroneous information please only reply if you've actually been diagnosed (by gastroscopy) with a peptic ulcer, and not just that you (or your doctor) just suspect you have one. Thanks.

My doctor suspects I may have a peptic ulcer and put me on PPI's.  In less than a week the symptoms were much releived, after 2 weeks the symptoms were mostly disappeared - I'd gone from constant pain/discomfort to nearly forgetting I had it.  So it certainly looked like an ulcer had been the culprit, and that PPI's had fixed it (or more specifically,as I understand, just reduced the acid allowing my body to heal it).

But then in week 3 the symptoms came back, almost as bad as before, even though I was still taking the PPI's.

So is that normal?  When you were diagnosed and given PPI's did it just get better in kind of a straight line, or did it get better but with significant relapses?

0 likes, 7 replies

7 Replies

  • liz16631
    liz16631 john45567

    Posted

    Hi John. I was diagnosed with gastric ulcers (in the stomach not duodenum) in January after an endoscopy. My symptoms started in November with intermittent burning/soreness in my stomach which I mostly felt at night. I also felt like I had a lump in my throat after swallowing and pain in between my shoulder blades (these symptoms would come and go). My GP put me on omeprazole and like you the burning disappeared for a few weeks only to return. At that point they said I needed an endoscopy which confirmed the presence of ulcers. My specialist has no idea what caused them except stress (I had taken multiple courses of antibiotics for a UTI in September/October which wouldn't clear up and while I was on a low dose ab the problems started). He doesn't believe there is a connection between the two but I do and my GP has said that abs can cause gastritis. He put me on lansoprazole which he says is stronger than omeprazole but my GP says PPI's are all the same. I was tested twice for h.pylori which came back negative but as most people on this forum will tell you you have to be off the PPI's for at least two weeks to get an accurate result. When I had my follow up endoscopy at the end of February the ulcers had finally healed but there was still an area of inflammation so I am still on lansoprazole. I have had days when I feel like it's all cleared up and now recently I feel like it's getting worse again. Our beloved dog is very ill and we are going to have to make a difficult decision soon. It's all happened so quickly and I think the stress of it is making things much worse.

    Has your GP tested you for h.pylori? Let me know how you get on

     

    • john45567
      john45567 liz16631

      Posted

      We're still not sure if mine is actually ulcers, but everything else seems ok (bloods/ultrasound show no apparent problems with liver, kidneys, gall bladder), and it does seem to fit (I had a bad reaction to Naproxine (an NSAID) which apart from the h.pylori is the other main cause a week or two before the pain started).  However, my symptoms don't completely match the classic ulcer symptoms so can't be 100% until they stick the camera down my throat...  But the PPI's do seem to be working again so we'll see how those go and see how the gastroscopy goes.
  • liz16631
    liz16631 john45567

    Posted

    PS are you in the UK? If you are I can honestly say that the care and compassion we have received regarding our very sick dog has been far superior to either my GP surgery and the consultant I saw. Good luck
    • john45567
      john45567 liz16631

      Posted

      Yes, UK.  Everything seems to take so long.  First blood tests, then 3 weeks to get another GP appointment, then they book an ultrasound which takes a month to get seen, then back to the GP, then a meeting with a consultant so another month (and I saw him at 11:45 for my 9:45 appointment - I have no idea how they manage to mismanage their time so spectacularly so early in the morning.  I mean I can see how it might slip gradually throughout the day due to people over running their allotted time, but 2 hours late at that time in the morning???).  So then he recomends the gastoscopy, so that's probably another month to get that appointment - and that's just to confirm if it's an ulcer or not... if not it'll probably be more of the same - wait a month for a test, wait another month for the next test.... and still 3 months in neither the GP or consultant has requested the h.pylori test yet...
    • john45567
      john45567 jonmg87

      Posted

      If this were a facebook status it would say "It's complicated"...

      Turns out I had (at least) two problems, starting at the same time (possibly or possibly not related or caused by another issue).

      Firstly, I had a gastroscopy which showed I had gastritis (but no ulcer), this is what the PPI's helped.  But that was only the cause of one pain.

      Things were complicated because I had several pains in the same area, so I assumed the same cause. So when taking a food diary I only listed if I was in pain, and how bad it was.  Not specifically the type of pain and exactly where it was.

      Once I split the pain out things became clearer.  The pain more in the middle was clearly the gastritis and that disappeared with the PPI's (and reappeared when I came off them).

      But the other pains were not the gastritis, or indeed gastrointestinal.  That explains the apparent contradictory results with the food diary and PPI's.

      Also, the other symptoms didn't remain the same, they got worse to the point where I would wake up at 4 or 5 in the morning and I would be in pain and would have to get out of bed because it was litterally to painful to stay lying down.

      The working theory was a trapped nerve, but while waiting for the MRI I saw an osteopath - this helped the pain a lot from the first session, and after the 2nd or 3rd session I was in basically no pain at all. 

      So turns out some of the pain was muscularskeletal - I would have poo-pooed that beforehand as a) I've had musle pains and back injurys  before and it didn't feel like that, b) I had several intense massage sessions which usually work very well on muscular pains but made no difference to these pains, c) it was getting worse despite rest, and d) stretching didn't work (at all) for these pains, even though it would normally help. So I was totally skeptical about that as a cause but the osteo worked.  She did say something about the facia around the ribs pulling them together and hard to stretch in the direction needed but most of it went in one ear and out the other.

      So the gastritis is now under control and/or gone (I'm slowly easing off the PPIs), the front/back pain has gone, and now I'm left with a slight pulling feeling on my bottom rib, and also (new) numbness around the rib.

      Further osteo isn't really having much impact on that problem, but it sure did help with the pain!

      I eventually had the MRI which showed a possible disc protusion ("slipped disc"?), but they sent me back for another MRI with contrast as they couldn't really see it properly.  Results aren't in yet, but working theory is a disc protusion which maybe pressing on a nerve causing issues around the rib.

      But anyway, if you have something similar maybe try an Osteo. Worse case you've thrown away £40 to rule it out...

      Also, be sure to track different pains separately, the doctors went down the gastrointestinal investigation route initially because I did report the pain getting worse on certain foods and getting better with PPI.  But the pain vs food vs PPi was very hit and miss because some of the pain was completely unrelated to what I was eating and that just completely confused everything. (eg. I had a really good day, so ate exactly the same things the next day and was in lots of pain at the end of it)

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