When I was pregnant with my daughter I had no heartburn or anything had a wonderful pregnancy. The thing is when I was delivering her the contractions that I felt were high up right underneath my ribcage. Well that is where I am having all the pain lately. So I don't know if there is a hiatal hernia that has developed there since I've had my daughter?? Had a barium swallow test last nov and they didn't find anything.
Also ::gerdsucks:: I just wanted to let you know that a lot of my gi problems started in my late teens and early 20's and have been continous expect for the one year I was pregnant and seems to be getting worse with each passing year. When I was little I always had an upset stomach and had tons of testing because I refused to eat for almost an entire summer. My pediatrician eventually came to the diagnosis of ealry adolescent onset anxiety disorder. I was a very nervous child and never knew why.
All throughout my childhood and into school I had anxiety issues. Then the last 2 years of high school I ended up getting really sick with a virus that mimicked mono(eppstein -Barr virus) and could not attend school for over a year, had to be tutored. Then I moved away from home after graduation and for a while most of my anxiety issues went away but my stomach issues started up really bad.
When in college I started going to more parties and of course drinking and for a while drinking helped my anxiety but not my stomach. So for me it was double edged sword, drink to keep the anxiety level down and deal with gi upset or not drink and deal with a bad stomach and anxiety.
Well I later learned in my mid 20's that drinking contributes to my stomch problems then I started developing a ton of other symptoms that I had never dealt with before. That would be the heart palpatations, chest tightness, the excess gassy feeling in my stomach, hard sharp pains just below my ribcage, pain radiating into my shoulders and upper back and shortness of breath. The first time I encountered this it had me so scared that I drove myself to the ER and swore up and down that I was dieing. I was 23 when that happened. As you probably know the er docs were laughing it up and telling me I was having anxiety attacks.
That was just one of that many times I eneded up in the ER over the course of the next 6 years. Last year I was hospitalized for 4 days because they thought I had a small bowel obstruction and after the endoscopy and the colonscopy they had no idea what was wrong with me. They couldn't find a thing.
It was just recently I started to correlate my periods with the intensity of the pain. I usually get mine around the 25th of each month but I would start feeling absolutely sick around the 19th of every month just like clock work. I started to go back and look at my er visits and they were always around the 19th or a couple days after or before. I just know to not really plan anything around that time becasue I feel terrible and it usually doesn't subside for about a week or so or until Im done with my cycle. So I can imagine fo us women there probably is a hormonal factor in it as well. I swear though that my husband has PMS too. So maybe thats why its worse for both men and women during certain times of the month..