1.5 years being sick - GI related - I'm desperate.

[johnc448]

I've been sick since April of 2016. Yes, for well over a year now. If anyone reading this can help me find out what's truly wrong that would be great.

In February of 2016 I think I had food poisoning. I ate sushi with my step son who also just got over having the flu and I took a sip of his soda not thinking anything of it. So not quite sure. That night I threw up for 8 hours straight until I was finally able to get in my car to go to Patient First where they gave me a Promethazine tablet and it stopped me from throwing up/dry gagging.

Fast forward to the beginning of my illness "in April", I had chronic constant diarrhea for 30 days straight. I finally went to see my primary care "PC" and he told me to take some Culturell and Imodium. The Culturell did nothing and the Imodium would only stop me from having to go to the bathroom every 30 minutes.

From May to August there were days when I couldn't get out of my bed from the nausea, pain, and it hurting to move from being dehydrated. I also had to go to the ER on three different occasions because I couldn't get enough fluids in my body with Pedialite. I found during this period that I always felt better in the evenings.

My first trip to the ER they gave me a 7-day mystery pill to take that was supposed to help with IBS but did nothing. I've had so many tests done it's hard to remember each one. I've had my stool tested several times for parasites. All came up negative. I asked for the medicine to take for it just in case and was given Flagyl. I took it and all it did was clear up some eczema on one of my eyelids.

Now, from Septermber 2016 to January of 2017 I found that I only felt nauseous when I had to poop and if I pooped that feeling went away. Prior to this, every time I felt nauseous, I'd just take a Promethazine tablet. So now I only take it if my heart stats to beat really fast like it does when you're about to throw up.

At one point my PC gave me Prilosec - The first day I took it I felt like I had never been sick before. It was a weird feeling because I was so used to being sick that sick felt normal to me. The second day it did nothing, third, fourth, fifth, and I stopped taking it.

I was told to go on a gluten free diet, diary free diet, and then to try them both together and that didn't help. I'm glad that's not what it was. Dairy is hard enough but eating gluten free was absolutely miserable.

I got a CT scan and the results came back with my spleen being enlarged, lesions that weren't significant, and a couple hernias that weren't urgent. I also got a Colonoscopy and my colo-rectal surgeon told me everything looked fine. He tested me for Chrons, Celiacs, and microscopic colitis or diverticulitis? Either way, all came back negative.

I found that taking TUMS made be feel better so I was eating them before and after every meal, before I went to bed, in the morning if I was extra sick, and it seemed to help quite a bit but I still had, what I had every day, a constant feeling like your entire body is sick, a constant state of nausea at a 2 on a scale to 10.

I had a bad GI who kept recommending I get tests I already told him I had done so once I finally found a new GI she told me to stop taking the TUMS because the calcium in them could cause kidney stones. She gave me some benign stuff to try called "xifaxan" that was supposed to help regulate my intestines but didn't and she told me to take my Prilosec twice a day which I've been doing and noticed that helped quite a bit.

Almost an exact year into being sick my new GI had me get an endoscopy because I still constantly have a low level constant feeling of nausea. The doctor who did that, afterwards, told my wife my stomach looked "modeled". And guess what, after a few weeks of waiting, the results came back saying everything was fine. After doing a follow up he recommended I take Amitril. He said it was an anti-depressant and said when you get really sick like this your mind becomes really "in-tune" with whatever it is and that the anti-depressant Amitril will help disassociate my mind with my GI system? In searching to educate myself on it more this was the only thing I could come up with: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3710425/

Needless to say the Amitril only makes my thoughts clearer but it makes my head feel... flat? It seemed to sort-of work for the first 30 days but now "45 days in" I'm starting to feel the random pain I sometimes get in my stomach/intestines that I've had over the course of being sick.

I still have loose stools and or diarrhea constantly but not to the point of dehydration. The amitril has made my stools extra soft and really odorous/pungent smelling

Some things to mention: If I don't take prilosec or TUMS I would wake up every morning with bad stomach acid or heart burn. I've only had regular stools from 8 months in to about now maybe once or twice a month at the most. It's a rare occurrence.

Stress and anxiety doesn't add or take away from the symptoms at all. Neither does eating healthy or eating whatever I want. Food intake does not alter my symptoms at all. Days where I had to prep for my Colonoscopy or Endoscopy I felt generally better by not eating anything at all.

Some days, more often than not, I feel my body trying to get rid of everything in it. I have to poop constantly even if it's a little. It's like my body doesn't want something in there and it's trying to get rid of it as fast as possible. One day my poop was white and one day my poop had a little blood on it.

The prilosec has most of my symptoms under control, sort of, but I still feel nauseous and or sick constantly through-out the day. Prior to getting sick I ate extremely healthy. Every day I would jump rope for an hour, lift heavy for an hour, go to my boxing gym and work out for around an hour or more, and late at night I would ride my road bike for about 45 minutes. I was super healthy. I only took protein, creatine, and amino-acid supplements and adult gummy vitamins.

When I'm healthy I can eat healthy. When I'm sick I can't do it. I can't be miserable and on a diet at the same time so I've gained a good 20-30 pounds of fat over the past year and a half. I've been trying to get back into eating healthy again but it's still hard to do since I'm still sick.

I get plenty of sleep and only drink water for the most part. I can get up and do stuff but not enough that I could exert myself in the gym. There's been 5 occasions where I felt good enough to exercise, did, and the next day it was back to being sick again.

Somebody help :(