Gastroparesis / Long Term Pain & Nausea

[Roos85]

Hello Everyone...

I am posting for my mom. 5 years ago she started having weird bouts of uncontrollable diarrhea. After several episodes she saw her Doctor, and he referred to her a GI doctor. The GI doctor started with different techniques and medicines and all. To make a long story short he diagnosed her with gastroparesis and put in a pacemaker to help regulate her stomach.

After a year he finally got it dialed in correctly and we thought we had it... Wrong! So after another year of unsuccessful tests and all those things he took the pacemaker out. After talking night and day with my parents about it he said at this point your stomach is useless and advised her to have it removed. She did. Ever since then it has been chronic nausea, pain, vomiting and diarrhea. Sometimes she can go a short period of time and be ok but most of the time she can't.

After about 2 years or so of dealing with this she finally decided to see a different doctor a little closer to home. This doctor specializes in Gastric Bypass but he was pretty sure he could figure out what was going on. After a bunch of tests and what not he went in laproscopicly (spelling) and removed a small pouch of stomach that was left, biopsied a sits on her ovaries, removed adhesions (he blamed her pain on this) and during the procedure he nicked her pancreas twice but said he repaired it and it should be fine.

After that she had a great 2 weeks and we thought we were home free. It starts at night in bed, she suffers from severe sweats, hot and cold she gets and then the nausea kicks in. From there the belly pain begins right where your abdomen is and progresses into diarrhea and vomiting. Then its back to the ER to help her get healthy again. They give her IV drugs and nausea medicine and a banana bag of vitamins and saline. After 4 or 5 days of that they discharge her and she comes home. Sometimes she is home a week or a few hours and then right back to the ER. The doctor has finally given up and advised her to go somewhere else as he has no idea where to go from here. She wants to go back to her original doctor and see what he says.

Does anyone have any ideas or can shed any light on this at all?? Please and thank you.

[patient915]

I have gastroparesis and I have GJ tube.  I absolutely love having a GJ tube.  I don't have to worry about not being able to get enough calories or losing weight.  The surgery was very easy and didn't cause very much pain.  It almost 100% solved my nausea and I also found a medicine that helps my pain.  I think a J tube/a GJ tube should have been done before a gastrectomy or a gastric pacemaker, as these are much more dangerous and painful surgeries.

[Roos85]

Also her main GI surgeon that started all this and did most of the surgeries is at a big name university. Georgetown university to be exact. We were thinking about trying Johns Hopkins next.

[Roos85]

The doctors did offer and say the next step would be a j tube but let's be honest that's not something everyone wants to have. Plus, we were mot convinced that would solve the nausea or the pain which they can't pinpoint.

[patient915]

Welcome to the gastroenterology community!  I would recommend you go see a different GI doctor at a large university hospital.  I believe that it sounds like your mom didn't get proper treatment.  Did the doctors even propose a J tube?