One month ago today, my stomach blew up.
In retrospect, I saw it coming, but I'll be be honest with you guys, I ignored it, because I was sad about my aunt and stressed about work and I wanted to eat my feelings, and enjoy coffee and drink to forget and take a Naproxen for my foot and then on Oct 16, I had a quarter of a pot brownie and we ordered Swiss Chalet and a few hours later, I woke up thinking I was going to die. The pain in my stomach was excruciating. After about 4 hours of agony, I actually threw up and WAS VERY HAPPY TO DO SO.
An aside: Chelsea Peretti does a bit in her stand-up special about whether you're from a barf family or a shit family. We're a shit family, so when I throw up, it is SERIOUS. I can't even MAKE myself throw up, because hell, if I could, I would probably have been bulimic through my twenties. So throwing up signalled that I had really crossed a line.
Long-time Creampuff devotees may recall that a similar thing happened to me back in 2010, which resulted in me experiencing the horrors of living gluten-free. After a few years of that nonsense, I discovered that, while I didn't feel GREAT if I ate a bucket of Timbits, it didn't cause the kind of great and terrible suffering you'd expect if I was actually celiac or had a serious gluten sensitivity. What really seemed to bring me to the brink of stomach disaster was the combo of caffeine, ibuprofen and stress. So I began to be very careful about the first two and was pretty much fine for seven years.
The few times I did have a more extreme stomach issue, I had a reliable stomach repair system. I would only drink water for a day, then add chicken soup in the next couple of days. Then some bananas and other bland solids. After about a week of bland times, my stomach would forgive my trespasses and I'd be elbow-deep in a Festive Special, just like old times.
Well, not this time, motherfuckers.
This time, any time I tried to actually EAT anything (vs drinking water or chicken broth), about two hours later I would get this crazy fist of pain up under my ribs that would last a few minutes or a few hours. It was the kind of pain where you can't do anything except pace around deep breathing until it's over. Clearly I had fucked myself up worse than ever before!
Naturally, I went to the doctor. And by the doctor, I of course mean the internet.
After researching my symptoms and the triggers I already knew I had, it seemed like what I was dealing with was gastritis - an inflammation of the stomach lining, often brought on by excessive consumption of NSAIDS, caffeine, booze (which I don't have that much of, but certainly had been drinking more of late) and (the one vice I do not have) smoking.
In my search for how to recover from this crazy flare-up, I came across a "Gastritis Support" group on Facebook. And I joined it.
Here's a thing you shouldn't do: join a Facebook group for a physical ailment. Because:
- No one there is a doctor. But one of their friends is cousins with Jenny McCarthy, so.
- A lot of these people have serious problems. Like, they have been fucked up for YEARS for reasons that are unclear. And it's fucking scary when you're also sick and feel like you might never EVER eat again.
- People have a lot of remedies that work for them and get shirty when those remedies don't work for other people and then there are fights.
- This post:
After a week of totally failing to heal myself using my usual bland diet and the advice of yahoos on the internet, I did finally go to a real doctor, who agreed with my self-diagnosis, sent me for an h.pylori test (negative) and gave me a ten day course of pills (PPIs, a class of drugs I'd seen mentioned in the group) meant to lower stomach acid so that my sad, ravaged tummy could heal.
I reported back to my Gastritis group that the doctor had prescribed these pills and all hell broke loose in the comments between the PPI haters and the PPI believers:
- "Dontt take them they wrecked my body"
- "She's only on them for 10 days and it's a mild dose."
- "PPIs make me worse"
- "I've been on them for 13 years and now I can't get off them without horrible consequences"
- "PPIs cause STOMACH CANCER and OTHER CANCERS, just drink oatmeal water and pray"
I defied the group and started the pills, while continuing my water and chicken broth regime. At first, I could eat about two tablespoons of something totally fucking boring at a time. Then I'd wait two hours to see if it fucked me up. Then I'd try two tablespoons of something else. Repeat.
It was like I'd given myself an involuntary gastric bypass. And I KNEW it was entirely my fault for ignoring the very clear warning signs my stomach had been sharing with me. But I was still very resentful and petulant about the whole situation. And also upset a lot of the time, because I was hungry. And you guys, this might shock you, but...I really like eating. Like, A LOT. And not being able to do it made me question my WHOLE LIFE in a way that wasn't entirely bad but still, omg, I JUST WANTED A FUCKING SANDWICH.
As a sidenote, Katr and Drtr were both saints to put up with me and my almost-month of wistful looks at their food and my occasional huffing of the peanut butter jar and my near constant bitching.
Slowly, slowly, I could eat more than two tablespoons of things at a time and I was SO GRATEFUL to, like, have a whole egg. I don't love sushi that much but I nearly cried when I could finally have a piece of sushi. Watermelon was a revelation. I made sweet, sweet love to a single green olive.
Anyway, it's been a month and I'm still being VERY careful about what I eat and how I eat it and how much of it I eat and it is fucking tiresome but definitely much better. But goddammit, it's holiday drink time, you guys! So today, I screwed up my courage and got a tiny decaf latte.
It was delicious.
