Posted 3/20/2015 10:44 PM (GMT 0)
Hello, new to the site. Newly diagnosed with GERD and Barrett's Esophagus at 29 years old, I am a female.
A little about my journey so far..
I started feeling really bad a couple years ago starting with not being able to eat full meals. I used to be able to put away food, but I found that I eventually could not finish one piece of pizza. I couldn't finish half of a sandwhich. I would wake up in the morning and not eat until 1 pm or 2, and even then it was barely a handful of food. I never lost any weight from it. I do need to add that I am a chronic marijuana user and have been since i was 21. I smoke A LOT daily. I found that when i was not high, i couldnt eat any food. But when i came home and got stoned, i could eat more. For months and months i would wake up at 4 AM every morning with a stomach ache and have to sit on the toilet for a half hour, and only a little ball of poo would come out. I have felt like ive been pooping through a straw for months. Well that went on for several months, I went to my GP and we did blood over and over and over again. All it would show was that my white blood cells were high. I got tired of going back to him and doing the same test and getting the same result. He just kept telling me i had IBS. I finally had him refer me to a GI doctor. Unfortunately in Austin, i made my appointment in April, i had to wait until July before i could even get in to see her for my inital visit. I woke up from a nap that night and went to the bathroom. All of a sudden this cramping in my lower abdomen became so severe, i blacked out, immediately started sweating, with chills, and shaking.. i swear to GOd i thought i was having a baby on the toilet. I was going to be one of those girls who didnt know she was pregnant and all of a sudden there is a fetus. Well that didnt happen. But i started throwing up while using the bathroom. All i could do was smoke more to stop the pain, and it worked. The next morning i woke up and used the bathroom and immediately started vomiting. I called the GI doc i had made my appointment with months prior in tears, and the girl on the phone couldnt do anything for me. She was completely booked up. I called Austin GI in a hurry and they were able to get me in that day. I only got to see the Physicians assisitant and i told her A LOT of information that i think got lost in the fact i was freaking out over the severe cramping in my lower stomach. To me, it felt like food wasnt moving through my intestines. it felt like it was getting stuck and not moving. They scheduled a colonoscopy for me that next week.. the prep was awful. i would just sit on the toilet and puke into a trash can at the same time all night long. Just to find nothing wrong with my colon. Not that I am complaining, i just kind of wished something would have been found after all of that. So they tell me its normal, i tell them i am still very sick and we need to figure out why. They scheduled a barium swallow for me, but i decided there was nothing wrong with my espohegus and i want them to look in my stomach. Maybe there is a bezoar or something crazy in there. (at this point i have spent so much time online trying to diagnose myself, which i have done 10 times over) We then scheduled a gastric emptying test, which came back completely normal. i am dumbfounded at this point. Fast forward a couple weeks, i have scheduled a follow up with my actualy GI doctor that did my colonoscopy. I didnt make it to the next week before i had my first trip to the ER. I still had not learned my lesson on eating a lot of food. Well, i didnt have that much time, i just didnt know. At the end of June I had gone out to dinner with my boyfriend to a steak house. I got super stoned before and was bound and determined to eat a full delicious meal. Steak, potatoes, bread, cookies, ice cream, and god knows what else later. I ate like crap all weekend. horribly. Well monday morning i didnt feel very well, told myself i wasnt going to eat. i did. I ate a breakfast taco at work. 10 minutes later this feeling right under my breast bone where my stomach and my duodenum meet I think, cramped into a tight ball and i immediately started vomiting in the bathroom. I grabbed a cup and drove myself home, which is about a 30 minute drive. Not fun at all while aggressively vomiting into a cup. Mostly foam and stomach acid. I finally got home after puking the whole way, i stood over my toilet in so much pain and could barely breath between the heaving. Most of the time i wasnt even throwing up anything. just this severe aggressive heaving and wretching. I called my boyfriend and begged him to take me to the ER. It was close to 2 hours before i finally got an IV with fluids. I got morphene for the pain and Zofran for Nausea. they ran the whole gamet of blood tests.. my white cells were elevated to 19. everything else came back normal. they did a CT scan and that came back completely normal. Sent me home with some vicodin and oral zofran. I went and finally got to actually TALK to my GI doctor and not a nurse or his assitant and i finally got to tell him everything that had been happening. I had a feeling he didnt know. When i told him all of this he said he wanted to do an endoscopy, and also said that the marijuana is causing my stomach not to talk to my brain.. that it is all connected and the weed is effecting it. I would also find that if i laid down after eating, i would wake up and be immediately vomit stomach acid. he gave me an RX for Omeprazole and Amitryptaline for IBS which really helps me sleep through the night. so no more 4 am bathroom sessions. There have been a couple episodes where I would be vomiting uncontrollably and have to leave work. I have done the drive home while puking in a cup at least 4 times now. I get home and clammer into the bath tub and take a hot bath.. that keeps it at bay long enough for me to take a zofran and keep it down. and then i feel so much better. I had my endoscopy and my doc said i had the beginning stages of Barrett's and a Hiatal Hernia, and GERD. He said if i dont stop smoking pot i will make it worse and probably get cancer. problem is i am so addicted.. i cant get myself to stop. And the Zofran bandaid apparently has only gone so far.
Yesterday was my 2nd trip to the ER. I have been doing so well. I fell off the wagon the day before yesterday during our SXSW festival. I had 3 beers on an empty stomach. The times before where I got sick it was always because i had too much to drink the weekend before. And this was no exception. I didnt feel bad. I came home and ate a sandwhich. went to bed a couple hours later. Woke up at 2 am and had a horrible stomach ache.. had horrible diarreah and that awful pain at the top of my stomach. I immediately grabbed a zofran and jumped in the bath. Didnt help. I then continued to vomit all through the night. didnt get any sleep at all.. i tried to let it pass and keep drinknig water that i kept throwing up. i couldnt keep it down, let alone the zofran i kept tossing back up. i think i took 4 hot baths, none of them worked. my boyfriend texted me at noon to see if i was better, i wasnt. he came home and took me to the ER for round 2. Unfortunately they didnt give me anything for pain.. just a couple nausea meds and some fluids. there was blood in my urine and my white cells were elevated to 18 and that concerned my doctor. he wanted to do another CT scan without the dye to see if i had kidney stones. Came back normal. I went home feeling better, ate some soup and crackers, went to bed. Woke up a half hour later with that awful pain in my stomach. It doesnt matter how i lay down, it just throbs and gives the worse nausea feeling. was up all night last night. My dumb ass didnt go get the zofran they prescribed me, the dissolvable kind this time. i had to wait until this morning to go get it. I havent been throwing up but also not consuming anything. My chest feels like its been punched. it hurts to breathe and to talk. i think hes going to make me eat more soup. but im scared to eat at all. This is just awful.
Has anyone else experienced anything like this?? Specifically anyone who might smoke as much as I? This just sucks. I know i have to change my diet, but if it were that easy, i wouldnt be in this mess in the first place. i just want to eat chocolate, and coffee, and wine.. is that too much to ask?? i can only eat so much fruit and veggies!! i would rather not eat ANYTHING at all then have to eat another darn salad!
frustrated.