Posted 2/5/2017 6:50 PM (GMT 0)
Wondering if anyone has thoughts about probable/possible underlying causes for a sequence of GI events over the past few months.
Last fall I was having some increasingly bothersome lower right quadrant bloat/pressure/pain. Primary care doctor had me do a week of diet modification which helped, but symptoms came back after resuming normal diet. So he had me go on a 10-day course of antibiotics (Augmentin) on the assumption that intestinal bacteria needed clearing up. The antibiotics did clear up the targeted symptoms (which have not recurred), but in the midst of the course I had a couple episodes of acid reflux which modulated into full-blown GERD after I was past the antibiotics. The GERD became increasingly severe and was accompanied by some nasty systemic symptoms for a week or two (chills w/out fever, brain fog, wooziness). Primary care doc had me go on PPIs (40 mg Nexium x 2 daily), which brought the worst of the GERD under control. A couple of weeks ago I had an upper endoscopy, which showed some erosive gastritis, not severe, and nothing else going on. Biopsy showed no H. pylori.
Still on the PPIs, GERD has quieted down but I'm continuing to have gastritis symptoms, in particular discomfort on an emptying stomach starting a couple hours after meals. Doing the usual things, careful about diet, cut out caffeine/alchol, probiotics, just started taking zinc/L-carnosine. Gastritis seems to be healing slowly and I gather it can take quite a while for that to happen.
Even if the gastritis resolves on its own, I'd really like enlightenment on what is the culprit in all this if not H. pylori. The most obvious thought is that the antibiotics did something to gut flora that helped with one condition but substituted another (and nastier) in its place. Is that reasonable, and when I see the GI specialist for followup in a couple weeks, are there any additional tests I might want to push for to get at the root cause?