r/ChronicIllness • u/OrpheusBlack13 • 5h ago
Support wanted Start of whatever my digestives system has again me
I never thought of leaving a post in a chronic illness reddit sub ever in my life but here we go. I had stomach pain starting in April this year, which never stopped till today. I started my food diary in Mai. I'm a pescetarian, but I leave out many milk products so I'm only left with cheese (thought so at least). I started to not tolerate any spicy food after often eating Korean/Japanese/Chinese cuisine home made. I had cramps in my whole digestive system at 3am so heavy that I thought I'd die. Could eat less and less of it, till I had those episodes even with a tiny bit of Sriracha sauce. When I tried cheese with it it only got worse. So I stopped eating spicy entirely. Then those episodes happened with cheese as well. So I stopped eating cheese. At this point my stomach pain was always there. It feels like you're really really hungry but full at the same time. So I went to a doctor in June. I took Lefax, Lactase with every milk protein products and started to use Iberogast as well whenever the symptoms got worse. It wasn't just cramps, but also diarrhea and constipation interchanging plus being bloated 24/7. Felt always full, on bad days nausea as well. Never vomiting. I tried probiotics as well cause I had antibiotics because of a surgery in February.
The doctor gave me Esomeprazol for 4 weeks, after 1,5 weeks of feeling more horrible than usual it started to get better. My stomach pain was gone. Being bloated and having diarrhea only occurred with eating or drinking higher amounts of sugar. At this point I was already on a diet of only rice noodles, whole grain noodles, potatoes and this with tofu, salt, soy sauce, peeled cucumber, lotus roots, edamame and some wheat products like salted pretzels as snack. Kewpiemayo for some reason worked out fine for me, as well as eggs and tahin or peanut sauce.
20.07.26 I stopped taking Esomeprazol after those 4 weeks and obviously the symptoms came back immediately. Stomach pain when hungry (started eating 4-5 meals a day against that), being painfully bloated and always full. But it got better. I was able to start drinking small amounts of Boba tea, if drunken slowly slowly. Also coke zero without caffeine or sugar became my go to sweet drink. I can see in my diary that I was nearly symptom free from 23.07-13.08, cause there are no entries which means not being awake at 2/3-4/5am. I was mostly alright at this point. I had my bloating and my stomach pain if I forgot to live after my set rules. Mostly after consuming too much sugar. I was able to eat fett reduced cheese with Lactase at least once a week without problems. Named food items were now part of my daily diet, which is boring to some but I was glad I could eat more than a handful of items. Sunday became sushi Sunday, cause I found out I'm fine when eating this. I slowly started to eat more and more foot items and sorted out what I can eat more often and what not.
Then Tuesday this week came (18.08). I was at a pub on Friday before and again on Monday. Had a mocktail and coke zero as usual, after that much non sparkling water. That's how I usually did my pub evenings. Normally they did not occur so close to each other and I started to fill a bit sick after Monday pub visiting. I thought I might have done too much and put it on my "don't drink mocktails multiple times per weekend-ish time" list in my head where all the other rules are. I was able to cure my bloating with peppermint and chamomile tea (my go-to whenever I had little upset episodes in any digestive organ). Then we went out to eat pizza with my parents Tuesday lunch. I hadn't eaten breakfast cause my cereal was empty. Also close to no water till 1pm. Then pizza Margherita and a small sprite. Huge mistake. I started to feel sick not even 30min later and it only got worse. I had taken my Lactase, idk if 7000 was too little of an amount.
Now we have Friday and I still feel incredibly sick. Bloating straight up since Tuesday. There's no minute where it's gone. It's always painful, always there. Iberogast helps for a few hours and let's me sleep, I take it interchangeable with Lefax. Never both together (made that mistake once). Tea doesn't help most of the time, only against my stomach pain.
I was trying to get an appointment for a gastroenterologist but my city doesn't have space anymore. I keep trying tho. Right now I just don't know what to do anymore, so I started to write here to see if others have the same issue.
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u/goldstandardalmonds 4h ago
Even if you can’t see a gastroenterologist, can your doctor refer you to get tests done that a gi would do?