Looking for ideas on how to help with gastritis/dyspepsia symptoms?

Posted , 13 users are following.

Hi everyone. I am a 22 year old female and after 2 years of mysterious symptoms with no answers I’m just feeling really discouraged and at a loss with where to go in terms of answers or treatments. Nearly 2 years ago I went to bed healthy and woke up and began dry heaving. After this incident, I started experiencing these episodes of hunger-like cramping and burning in my stomach along with incapacitating nausea. These symptoms would occur at night and keep me up for the entire night sitting straight up and intermittently dry heaving. It was my final year of college and the symptoms were causing me to miss class or have to leave early when I felt like I was going to get sick. I went to the doctor and was prescribed Omeprazole for gastritis symptoms and although the pills helped immensely and allowed me to live my life again, the symptoms never completely went away and about every week at least 1 day I would also have to take an H-2 blocker like Pepcid in order to completely stop the symptoms. I then sought help from a GI specialist and had many tests done. I was tested for H-pylori (negative), had an endoscopy (showed slight irritation but biopsy also came back H-pylori negative), a ultrasound of my gallbladder, an MRI of my abdominal area, and even a last ditch bloodwork to check my thyroid. All of these provided no answers and left me low on money and out of options for tests to take. I also tried lifestyle changes including cutting out alcohol (which did seem to make symptoms worse along with anything that would typically irritate a stomach), never eating spice ( which I never really ate to begin with), and just generally eating a mild and bland diet, I kept a food journal to no avail, and I even raised the head of my bed so I wouldn’t be laying flat at night. All the while my doctor just kept prescribing me pills including the Omeprazole which I don’t want to keep taking. It has many scary sounding long term effects and I’m only 22 years old. I just don’t know what else to do. If I stop the pills I can’t eat, sleep or go to work, but they’re bad for me as well in the long run and I just want some kind of answer to why I was healthy one night and then woke up to nearly 2 straight years of unexplained symptoms. Can anyone think of anything that could potentially help or could be tested for? I’m at a loss for where to go from here.

1 like, 20 replies

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  • Posted

    Hi,

    How are you doing now?

    I have the same symptoms and it's really stressful to say the least.

    I was doing completely fine but suddenly one night, I had severe nausea and since then, it's been a struggle.

    It's been 2 months now since I started getting these symptoms.

    I have some nights where I have really bad nausea but other than that, acid reflux is what I experience almost everyday.

    I have occasional heartburn sometimes and I'm taking pantoprazole for it.

    I hate being dependent on meds too.

    I have this weird uncomfortable feeling in my upper abdomen (just below my ribcage) and it's there almost everyday. Medicines don't seem to help with that.

    All of this gets me really stressed which results in sleepless nights sometimes.

    But stress only makes the symptoms worse so try not to stress too much.

    I know it's hard since I'm going through the same but all we can do is hope.

    I'm 20 btw.

    Hope it gets better for us soon!

    • Posted

      Hi really sorry to hear youre going through this too 😦. Have you had any testing done yet? The first step is usually to get bloodwork done to test for H pylori and then an endoscopy so the doctor can take a closer look at what's going on. My issues have been going on so long I've run out of tests to have done but I'm hopeful that maybe you can find a solution soon!

    • Posted

      I'm sorry to hear that 😦

      And stress really does make it worse.

      I don't really notice the discomfort when I'm busy doing other things.

      It just gets worse when I think about it!

      Hopefully, it'll get better soon for both of us!

      Let's just keep sharing our progress! (if you don't mind)

    • Posted

      Has your doctor thought about a double dose of antibiotics in case it's some infectious cause? I plan to request this if my condition goes on much longer. Do you get reflux pain or just nausea?

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