Hi. To be honest I’ve always had stomach problems for as long as i could remember, literally the story I’ve heard the most was about when i was maybe a year old and i had to be rushed to the ER cause i hadn’t pooped in like 2 wks.
I’ve always had problems like that, always getting sick in elementary and always having horrible stomach aches. Middle school i cant remember much but i just sucked it up, in high school i ate whatever i could all spicy and bad stuff but i didn’t know any better and ate it all.
However near my junior and senior year i could tell that something was up since i started feeling sick after eating and getting acid reflux almost everyday but again, i just ate whatever. Around the end of my senior year i started getting more sick so i would go to the doctors and see what was wrong besides the usual constipation i would get, i didn’t really say anything about the acid reflux cause i thought it was normal. After graduation and going to college a year later i actually started going more to the hospital and slowly started eating just a bit better, but still eating spicy and what not.
Well around the time i started college i started getting super sick and throwing up food i would eat, mostly spicy foods but still foods i would eat. I wasn’t constantly throwing up but it was concerning so i went to get more tests to see what was wrong, all saying nothing really was wrong but just some minor stomach issues like constipation and etc. I ended up going to a specialist after awhile since the normal doctor i had didn’t know what was wrong and i still wasn’t getting better and i started getting pretty sick (well to be honest the first specialist i had was pretty rude so i went to another one who was very kind). He did some tests and he thought it was something about my acid reflux and gallbladder not working correctly SO i ended up getting different surgeries done on me, one was putting a titanium linx around my esophageal sphincter, the other taking out my gallbladder and the last one i cant remember since this happened around august in 2020. For a couple of days i was recovering well for the most part and i really thought i was gonna get better.
Well a week into my recovery i started throwing up and spitting like crazy, i had to spit up ALOT and it almost filled up a bucket with how bad i was spitting up. I didn’t want to eat and even if i did i couldn’t handle it, i was just getting extremely dehydrated and sick and it all happened so suddenly. I ended up going to the ER two times, the first time they just gave me some morphine and IV fluid and did a test but nothing came up so i went home, the second time they did the same but i was looking more sick and weak so they transferred me to a different hospital farther from where i was.
I really can’t remember much of what went on there but even when i try i just can’t handle it, it’s too much to think about. I was alone for practically 13 days in that hospital room and although my mom usually tried to visit me, the covid restrictions were very high and she would always have to leave early and go to work so i would see her for a short time. I couldn’t eat and i was always on the iron IV and normal IV, i started losing alot of weight and even when i could eat it was all liquids. I for real thought something was gonna happen to me. On the day before I was able to leave they couldn’t figure out why i was like that, i had done around like maybe 4 tests or so but nothing came up really just that i couldn’t process food correctly and that maybe the titanium linx was making my body reject it. I was able to leave the next day but i was still sick, better than how i was but sick, spitting, throwing up and very weak. I ended up going to the ER and hospital again the next couple of weeks, we decided that i should take out the linx to see if it’ll help me get better.
After the surgery to take out the linx around October i did feel a bit better but maybe that was just in my head, finally thankful that i would get better again. Well in the next couple of weeks and months i just kept continuously going to the ER and different hospitals cause how bad i was. At one point cause of how bad my throwing up got, where i was throwing up dried blood, i had to get a tube down my nose and they had to put it down my nose twice since the first nostril they did it was too small (i ended up getting a nose bleed because of it and i was crying nonstop). I truly didn’t think that a surgery i thought was gonna help me would turn out like this. However around late December, a couple a days before Christmas while i was still in the hospital they finally found out what was wrong with me. They found out i had gastroporasis, severe at that but we finally got the diagnosis after all this time. After they made sure i was okay again and gave me botox to calm down my stomach, i went home for Christmas. I lost about 60 pounds and was practically skin and bones, bruised up everywhere and losing hair, i felt horrible and disgusting. My mental health was at its lowest and it didn’t help that i was also having extreme family problems as well. In January I went back to the ER and hospital but thankfully i stayed there for 4 days only, i was slowly feeling abit better and we found a new specialist who was most well versed with gastroporasis.
In 2021 i only went to the hospital in January and i think its thanks to the botox they gave me that i was able to calm down. I still had different doctors and was prescribed abunch of medications to help me out (alot were very strong) but the one who knew more about gastroporasis had me go to him to see how i was doing. He was alot of help and he suggested a last surgery that would help alleviate the gastroporasis but not get rid of it entirely. I ended up saying ok to the surgery because what do i got to lose? I was taking super strong medications everyday and almost every hour and the side effects were too scary to think about so maybe getting the surgery would be better. I had to do different tests, all were payed by our insurance but some we had to pay and thankfully I had the support of my family helping with money. I was supposed to get the surgery in November but with how high it was and my family’s financial problems i couldn’t get it, so we rescheduled it to December. The doctor was kind enough to help bring it down and suggest other things to help us pay for it, my family helped us with that money as well. I had to go on two week liquid diets and it was unbearable but i was already use to the liquid diets by now.
Finally i got the surgery and i will say it has helped alot, i had 2(maybe 3) other things done with the main one and so far im doing very well. There are still days where i don’t feel good eating and having a little bit of reflux but so far im okay. I cant work yet or anything and since my stomach is super sensitive i can’t really get worked up or lift many things, i have to be super careful of what i eat as well. But hopefully this will be the last surgery for a good while that has to do with my stomach and gastroporasis. I cant say much about how other’s deal with their feelings about gastroporasis but i definitely had a very good support system to help me through it, even the hospital helped provide me with some therapists while i was stuck there for all those long weeks i was stuck there. I would like to think that it all does get better and so far i am getting better, though im sometimes scared it’ll just randomly flare up and get me super sick again.
One thing i will say is that it’s better to talk about what you are going through with other or going to a therapist, because I still have bad memories of it and even while writing this I was crying thinking about all that pain and loneliness i went through. I’m 22 about to be 23 and to be honest i didn’t think I would go through all this at my age but anyone can go through this at any age it’s so scary to think about. Im praying that I’ll stay okay later on in my life and i hope that y’all will too, sorry for such a long story.
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