I have pretty good reason to believe that my stomach became inflamed sometime in early February. Around February 1, I got a stomach bug (all 3 of us in the household did) and I ended up having long lasting symptoms for some reason. Three of us had diarrhea and one had with with vomiting. Everyone else got better from it. I never had vomiting, just diarrhea. We had black, tarry/watery diarrhea for a number of days. I went to the ER for massive pain in the Solar Plexus region during the time when I was basically over the diarrhea and getting back to normal again. I have had an MRI and contrast CT scan. Appendicitis and Pancreatitis was ruled out by various doctors. They scanned every organ in my abdomen. Nothing. The ER said to go see a Gastroenterologist. A couple of weeks ago I had an Upper Endoscopy of the stomach and duodenum. I have had on and off upper abdominal pain for a month and a half. It is right in the middle area where the solar plexus is. Initially, sometimes the pain was a burning so strong that I couldn't sleep over an hour or two on certain nights. I was initially on Pantoprazole (Protonix) 40mg once per day and Pepcid AC 20mg twice a day for about 3 weeks. I took it for about a week before my Upper Endoscopy. He initially told me to take it once per day, but as of about a week ago when my pain became so strong (after 3 weeks) that I couldn't sleep at night, he told me to take the 40mg Pantoprazole twice a day (morning and night) with the Pepcid AC and I take a third Pepcid AC during the middle of the day per his direction. He said it takes a while for the stomach inflammation to go back down.
I suspect that stress and my sleep issues (likely a condition called Upper Airway Resistance Syndrome, or UARS) are to blame for helping kick down my immune system and also causing overproduction of stomach acid and anxiety symptoms that started coming out of nowhere 3 months ago. I wake up an awful lot at night almost in a way similar to sleep apnea, but the condition is more subtle and narrows the airway ridiculous amounts of times just enough to wake you all throughout the night without you knowing.
During the Upper Endoscopy, he took biopsy samples to send to the lab. Negative for cancer and bacteria. I asked if there was another test he could do because of my fear that I might have H. Pylori and he said, "The Upper Endoscopy is the best test to determine that."