January 28th
Him: "I saw you before...why are you back?"
Me: "My stomach pain has returned"
Him: "You don't look like you're in pain"
I bit my tongue to avoid saying some rude words. He did a quick exam and said I was malnourished so I asked him how I could gain weight without ingesting starches, which cause the pain to become severe. He told me to drink Boost.
Me: "Boost contains dairy. I'm allergic to dairy"
Him: "They make a lactose-free kind"
Me: "The lactose-free kind contains whey protein. It makes me very sick"
Him: "No, no....drink Boost" (waving his hand dismissively)
I bit my tongue again.
He tells I have an intolerance to certain sugars (he is certain of this, just like he was certain before that I had Celiac) and to start the FODMAP diet, take a multivitamin, antacid and probiotic daily, and come back in 3 weeks.
Me: "But I don't have heartburn or acid reflux, only abdominal pain"
Him: "Pain is from the acid, take the Pepcid"
Me: "Pepcid makes it worse, that is why I stopped taking it"
Him: "You have pain because you stopped taking it. Take the Pepcid"
By this time my tongue was pretty sore from all the biting. I realized there was no getting through to him, so I just nodded like a bobble head at whatever he had to say, got out of there and went back home to scour the web for answers. Meanwhile, I did try the FODMAP diet out of desperation with minimal improvement initially, but, as with all the medication and diet changes before, the pain returned and foods that I could tolerate one day, caused me pain the next. My weight dropped to 97 lbs. I became too weak to bathe myself or keep up with washing the small amount of dishes I was using. If diet wasn't the key, what was? I decided to change my approach. Instead of searching for ways to work around the erosion, I began to seek out the root cause of it, so I could attack it at the source.
