Wednesday, July 12, 2017 –
As I mentioned in What’s Gastroparesis, there are several causes for the disease including; Diabetic Gastroparesis and Idiopathic Gastroparesis.
Having diabetes does make for an easier diagnosis of the disease, but it’s still overall one of the hardest to diagnosis. As you may already know there are no real blood tests that identify Gastroparesis and sadly it’s too common that it takes months for most doctors to make an official diagnosis.
I was lucky in the sense that after being in the hospital for 10 days I received my diagnosis, via a Gastric Emptying Study.
• Gastric Emptying Study – is an exam that uses nuclear medicine to determine how fast food leaves the stomach. It differs from a standard x-ray in that is uses a small amount of radioactive material to emit photon energy.
To me, 10 days felt like forever, but after speaking with several people I was lucky, most of them waited for anywhere for 6 months to 18 months to receive their diagnosis.
Let me tell you about how my diagnosis came about:
Tiffany In The HospitalDuring the end of May 2015 I started noticing that when I would eat I would get full very fast, literally after only a few bites. I didn’t think much of it except that maybe my stomach was upset and I could chalk it up to my menstrual cycle messing up with my appetite. At the end of the first week of June, I went in for a routine ultrasound. I let them know that my appetite was off and that a few days prior I started experiencing abdominal pain. (My pain was right where my stomach is, top of abdomen right in the middle and when I was at its worst it would shoot straight through my back.)
Right after my ultrasound I was admitted to the hospital because they found I had a mass on my gallbladder and thought that possibly my gallbladder would need to be removed. After doing a biopsy it found it was non-cancerous, thank goodness! But the following day I started throwing up. Every time I would eat I would throw up and the pain would get worse. This was a vicious cycle until I just stop eating because I couldn’t take it anymore. During the next week and a half the doctors would do several tests and all of them would come out negative.
By the tenth day, one of the resident doctors came in and said that I would be moving rooms to a location called, “The Sitter Room”. Yes, sitter, like a babysitter! At first, this made absolutely no sense until she continued to explain that they were beginning to think I was making myself throw up and I had a severe eating disorder. To this day I get a warmth of anger through my body when I think about that statement she made. Yes, I’m very thin. Yes, I’ve been this way my entire life. No, I don’t and I have never had an eating disorder!
The following day I woke to the nurse telling me I was being sent downstairs for a Gastric Emptying Study. Annoyed that I was going to sit uncomfortably on a cold hard table, in pain was so frustrating. When I was wheeled into the cold room, I have parked in front a small table with a paper bowl of the brightest looking scrambled eggs I’d ever seen. I ate the eggs. Then I had to lay on the cold table with a giant circle machine over my abdomen and chest for 2 hours.
Surprisingly shortly after returning to my “Sitter Room” a nurse walk in and said you have Idiopathic Gastroparesis… Um okay, what did you say? Gastro what? She continued to explain to me what Gastroparesis was and to my surprise so was naming off all of the symptoms I had been complaining about. I was confused but relieved at the same time. One because it was a kick in the ass to the doctors that thought I had an eating disorder and confused because I’d never heard of this disease.
The next month would consist of my taking the medicine they gave me, going home, becoming sicker and being readmitted to the hospital. By July and my second admission, I was beyond lost and frustrated. I spent every day researching all I could find about Gastroparesis. By the time I discharged a second time I had completely come up with a diet and natural supplement plan that would hopefully control my symptoms. I was excited to try what I had discovered.
To my doctors surprise within two months I had 90% of my symptoms in check and I was feeling great most of the time.
I know some people spent years waiting for a correct diagnosis or maybe you are having the symptoms but haven’t received an official diagnosis. Don’t let the doctors try to convince you otherwise. You know your body better than anyone. Don’t let the white coat intimidate you!
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