Shannon’s Personal Story: Severe Gastroparesis After Unexpected Onset

How do you tell the story of how your life fell apart? You went to the doctor thinking you just had some weird stomach illness but medicine and the doctor would make it better. In the fall of 2015 I had the worst seasonal allergies I had ever had. It turned into something that felt like a chest cold. I was having trouble breathing, so I went to a walk-in clinic. The doctor diagnoses me with bronchitis and gave me a Zpack antibiotic. I began taking the antibiotic and started to notice I was fatigued and loosing my appetite. I finished the antibiotic and continued to feel sick. I began to vomit daily. I went to my primary care doctor who thought I had a stomach virus. I couldn’t stop throwing up. I went to the ER, no help. Called and badgered my primary care doctor because I knew this wasn’t a normal stomach virus. I had never been so sick. They suggested I go to a GI. I went to the GI and he knew right away what was wrong. GASTROPARESIS. I will never understand how I can be completely healthy and take an antibiotic that people take all the time and end up with severe gastroparesis. It haunts me. What if I had stopped taking the zpack when I first started to feel sick, what if I had just let the bronchitis run its course, what if, what if, what if. I struggle to get through each day. It is daunting. Knowing you will wake up every day for the rest of your life sick and sicker. I was only 36 when this started. So young, so many plans, so much life to live. Now I am just enduring. I pray for more research and hopefully a cure but realistically with the research I have found Ideopathic GP seems to be caused by nerve and cell damage in the stomach. Nerve damage is permanent. I cry, I scream, I try every new diet, medicine, natuopathic cure and still no relief. I just want hope.

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