3 1/2 years in and no light at the end of the tunnel

Hi, my name is Chris. I've never done a blog or put my thoughts down for others to see and share. Forgive me if I tend to jump around a little, I am working with nearly 4 years of nausea, pain, weight loss, weight gain, and many other unpleasant details of of what I now call normal life. I'm going to begin with a few stomach pains and ulcers in 2009. I was referred to a GI doctor and he ran every test he could but ultimately he never once actually did an exam himself. I guess he didn't think I needed results of the tests because he just wrote a handful of different prescriptions. This little series was just a hint of hell I would soon endure. It did go away for a while and I was able to marry the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. We had a small wedding with just a few close friends and family, but went big on our honeymoon to Paris, FR. It was a full week of beauty, fun, wild metro jumping, buying bread in the morning to eat on all day because we couldn't see all we wanted to see and have time to stop to eat. It was the most memorable experience either of us could have ever taken, and we have over a 1000 pictures and several hours of video to remember it for life. Coming home we got into our life being married and taking care of my two kids when we had them. The kids are the most amazing kids ever and they will later become a very big part of this life in not such a good way. In late December 2009 I started to notice the nausea and pain in my stomach again, but it was different, more intense than ever before. I started back with my Gastroenterologist and his idea was to throw medications at me and nothing seemed to help. I was referred to a second Gastroenterologist. As the days went on I found myself having to leave work everyday. I just could not handle the nausea and pain. Finally I gave in and went to the emergency room because I had lost weight at roughly the rate of 10 lbs a week. I was drinking Gatorade for my nutrition and my GI doctor thought this was ok, well I just couldn't bare it anymore. They admitted me to the hospital and ran daily tests that were all showing nothing. My GI at the time came to me with my wife, my mom and my mother in law and accused me of "manifesting the pain", which meant I was making it up to get drugs. Now I have an accounting degree and have worked every day of my life since I was 14 years old. Now I'm not a genius but I'm not going to make up pain to lay in a hospital away from my kids and family just to get drugs. My mother happened to work at the hospital I was in and asked a doctor that she knew to come and talk to me and give his assessment. We talked for a while and I thought it was ok. He told me he was ordering a couple more tests and he left. What he failed to tell me was he ordered a psychiatric session with the attending psych doctor. These tests were ran back to back first a Gastric Emptying Scan, the other being the psych eval. I had my best friend come sit with me just to have someone to talk to because it was a long test. Now generally you don't get results right away but my friend was pretty inquisitive, so he asks the guy what we were looking at. He tells him well I can't give you a diagnosis but there is no wonder he is in such pain. Hearing this brought relief in a couple of ways 1) I wasn't crazy and making this stuff up and 2) there was a name for it. I still had to have my psych eval after which he was extremely upset that they had wasted his time and mine and even told my wife and I that they should have spent the time figuring out what was wrong with me and not looking for excuses. Over the next couple of days I was put on a couple different meds and was feeling a little better. After 10 days in a hospital I was sent home with a disease called Idiopathic (meaning they had no idea how I had gotten it) Gastroparesis, which simply means paralyses of the stomach. I was relieved to have a diagnosis but I had no idea how this this would change my life forever. -break time. Be back shortly...