The Untold Story.

Background: I was born with no medical conditions what so ever. No family member of mine has an intolerance to food neither allergy besides hay fever in my mother.

Early May 2007 [where it all started].
I was not so much eating "healthy foods" occasionally eating takeaway maybe 3 times a week; I was a very energetic person who played soccer 3 times a week, ran their own business, managed another & lived a happy life.

A bug was going around that week "Gastro" they call it, anyway I like to stay up at night and do some work. Late night came where I went out with my mate around 02:00 AM bought a kebab came home and ate it. I can honestly say I have never felt anything like this in my life the feeling of abdominal cramping, nausea, fever (from cold to hot constantly for a 1 hour period), heart beating as though it was about to burst out of my body & diarrhea. I instantly went to the toilet and tried vomiting it out, I became almost crazy my mind changed from one state of mind to another within seconds – getting to a point of putting my hands in my throat to vomit (nothing was coming out) I don’t regularly vomit (probably 6 times in my whole life). I decided to let it go as something being non-serious; I went on a rehydration drink for 2 weeks and felt a little better. I then decided to try it out and eat another kebab, it was fine that night, and I ended up eating the entire kebab and was very glad that I was back to normal, but nope, I ended up feeling the symptoms again.

I then decided to go visit the doctor again and explain to them my situation, I was having problems digesting anything, everything that went into my stomach made me feel the following.
- Bloated
- Gassy
- Diarrhea
- Massive head spins/Headache
- Fever (stayed for 1 month) – This was the worst, I would fluctuate from cold to hot and just keep going on like that for an hour.
- Heartburn
- Constant bowel movements (stomach was gurgling like crazy)

I thought to myself that I was going to die, I didn't bother waking up my parents (they would have thought I was on drugs or been drinking)

Without doing an endoscopy on me or anything, he prescribed me with Nexium tablets (thinking what I had was an ulcer). This is the first set of Antibiotics I have taken in 20 years of my life. I stayed on these tablets for 2 weeks & also took Gaviscon 2 times a week (heavy liquid for the stomach lining).

After those 2 weeks & seeing no results I went back to my doctor and told him that I am still having the same problems, I then requested and endoscopy be done & he for filled the request. Endoscopy came back with my H.pylori meaning that there is no Ulcer in my stomach.

All this was after a bout of Gastro, plenty of my friends have had gastro before and it hasn’t affected them the same it did to me.


November 2007 Hydrogen Breathe Tests [HBT] / Blood Tests igG & more / Ultrasound
My doctor has now sent me to do Breathe Tests & Blood tests.
Blood tests signified that there was nothing wrong at all.
Ultrasound done & nothing present.
Sugar 0 15 30 45 60 75 90 105 120 135 150 165 180 time (minutes)
Lactulose 1 0 0 0 1 1 3 56 6 5 5 22 22 (ppm)
Fructose 1 6 5 1 1 0 20 24 24 (ppm)
Lactose 0 4 0 0 0 40 78 86 41 (ppm)

I was diagnosed as being “lactose and fructose” intolerant, as I walked out of the HBT test rooms I was disappointed, but more concerned. I went back to my doctor as he provided me with all the results, he told me that I will not have this forever as it’s just a temporary thing at the moment, I questioned this as I have done some extensive research on both the intolerances, but the facts are right here:

- I GAINED 2 INTOLERANCES AFTER GASTRO how is this possible?
- COULD THIS BE SECONDARY TO SOMETHING ELSE?

I asked my Doctor... will this be a life thing or just temporary states that this "will go away" and is just a short term thing, he made it very satisfying to me comforting me twice about this not only once. - My doctor persisted I eat my normal foods as he believes I have been misdiagnosed.

January 2008 THE BIG GI MAN!
I was then referred to a GI, explained to him my story – I was then appointed to do an endoscopy (biopsy of the small tissue aswell) in January 2008 (I was very glad about this). Heres what he found..
- “Inflammation of the bowel”
- “infectious enteritis”
- “Swollen Esophagus”
He turned around to me at our next meeting and goes “it’s exactly as I expected, there’s a bacterial infections present in the stomach”… Now I am thinking that this is SIBO or some other type of bacteria (Candida).

I was placed on these antibiotics which are HUGE! For 2 weeks called “Amoxycillin” – I had trouble swallowing them so I crunched them up and put them in my food and ate it (it tasted like ######). Anyway this did absolutely nothing.

I then turned around to him and asked him the same question I asked my doctor is this something for life or will be return back to my normal self again. He turns to me and goes “no my son, you will return to the way you were before this infection took over”…. Boy I was glad to hear these words.

This is where I am upto now, January the 20th 2008 sitting in front of my computer, how do I feel now? I am so glad you asked… In terms of bowel movement (a lot better) the fever has gone THANK GOD!

Here’s how I feel & what has happened to this date.
- I am bloated after everything & anything I eat.
- Headache constantly (all day)
- Sleep and wake up really unrefreshed
- Brain fogged up.
- Brain freeze and I forget what I was doing.
- No energy at all
- Feel fragile & week
- Vision blurry
- Mood swings (anger)
- Trouble swallowing & eating
- Always tired
- memory loss
- Depressed
- Bleeding Ear
- Loss of weight (15 kilos)
- Depression
- Anxiety

NOTE: The smell of Marijuana a joint makes me feel very sick & smells tick me off really badly. I have had itchy balls & a lot of my pubes falling out (laugh if you want, I even found it funny).

 I love life & love everything about it, but with this on my shoulder it’s ruined EVERY aspect of my life. For those people who say “live with it, you can beat it – no one wants to live a life like this, if you do your just causing pain & misery to yourself, I plan to have a family when I am older and do a lot more then what I have accomplished already, and this may be a stepping stone or a wall, yet to see.

The reason why I posted here is to see if anyone could provide me with their experience (or if anyone has gone through the same thing) – I am desperate to become the person I once was.

Kind Regards,
Deadman Walking

Post Edited By Moderator (Ides) : 1/20/2008 1:47:55 PM (GMT-7)

I would guess that many of your symptoms are the result of feeling so miserable for so long, like the depression. fatigue, even headaches. When you look at your symptoms I think you will see that most can be attributed to emotional health which is probably from concern that this is a forever condition. Have you talked to the Dr. about these feelings? Perhaps a light anxiety med will help with some so you can concentrate on the physical part of your problem. Things can get really confused when so many things are involved. I jsut went thru this with a friend of mine. Almost the exact same thing as hers came out of the blue also but the antibiotics messed her up further and then the emotional part took over and it went downhill from there. Finally after about 2 months she is back on track as the intestinal problems started to subside. You mentioned Nexium and then antibiotics. Nexium is not an antibiotic so you have really only been on one. Amoxicillan which frankly is not really that strong. It is basically penicillan. Apparantly you had a severe reaction to some spice or something in the kabobs and that screwed up your stomach and it may take a long time to recover but your Doctor thinks it will. Since this came on so fast it had to be from the kabobs and probably from some spice or maybe even something they are using to clean with. Have you by any chance talked to the owner of the Kabob place and asked what spices they use. It sounds to me like something was just plain poison to your system and maybe you can narrow it down. In the meantime try to keep the gas under control with Mylanta or other gas meds as that will help the inflammation. Good luck and let us know. This to shall pass.

I just posted an article on a new study that is looking to connect the dots between people who have had food poisioning in the past and who have odd, seemingly unrelated problems afterwards.

Have you ever considered that the kebab you ate might have been contaminated and that it wasn't a stomach bug you picked up, but food poisioning?

IF you did indeed have a bacteria problem in your colon (the fever would seem to indicate some sort of infection), then those are VERY hard to get rid of. Amoxicillin is a relative of penicillin and, therefore, I don't think it's too strong. Most people who are diagnosed with a bacterial overgrowth/infection are put on VERY strong antibiotics. Like I said, it's hard to get rid of that stuff, and more than one round of antibiotics is not uncommon.

You can also try probitotics. In any case, the antibiotics have killed off a lot of your good bacteria, and a lack of good bacteria looks a lot like an over abundance of bad bacteria. Try some probiotics and get back in to see the GI. Besides bacteria, an auto-immune disorder can cause fevers and inflammation of the colon and they need to make sure you don't have that problem. I think it's pretty rare when you don't have a family history of bowel problems of any kind, HOWEVER, a family history of any type of auto-immune disorder, like Grave's disease, Lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, fibromyalgia, etc. increases your risk of developing an auto-immune disorder of the bowels.

Have you actually tried going off sugars? There is evidence that bad bacteria thrive on sugar, and so going off of it may help kill them off. If you get better for a while, then try them again and get bad again, then you may suspect that your test for intolerance to sugar was accurate. No one knows what triggers allergies, but they can pop up out of the blue.