Gastric Bezoar/Gastroparesis

[whatdidido]

Update!

I had my appointment with a gastroenterologist today and had a Esophagogastroduodenescopy done and for the first time since this has happened I've actually received somewhat of an answer.

For anyone who has had one of these, you know you must fast with no food after midnight usually for the procedure the next morning. I didn't eat after 8pm last night but this morning, the doctor was very surprised to see undigested food still in my stomach. In a span of 12 hours, my dinner was just...fermenting?... in my stomach and not moving. Apparently my stomach is unable to pass food normally. He said i have a gastric bezoar which implies i have a condition called Gastroparesis.. "A gastric bezoar is defined as a foreign body resulting from accumulation of ingested material, most commonly found as a hard mass or concretion in the stomach". The photo is pretty disgusting, i wish i could figure out how to post photos here, so i can only assume, and he said it was possible, that this might be causing my bad breath.

He said my esophagus and vocal cords were normal, but he saw benign fundic gland polyps in my stomach-- apparently there is pretty solid correlation between the over use of PPIS and these types of polyps (which makes sense, cause thats all doctors were prescribing me right off the bat).

With that being said, i have to undergo another test called a "Gastric Emptying Study" which google says is...
"In patients with gastroparesis, the food and the attached radioactive material remain in the stomach longer than normal (usually hours) before emptying into the small intestine. As a result, the scanner continues to show radioactivity in the area of the stomach for hours after the test meal. If abnormally slow emptying is demonstrated, medications such as metoclopramide (Reglan) may be given to speed up the emptying and improve symptoms".

He has prescribed me Motilium to take after the study and that is suppose to speed up the emptying of my stomach, but i can't take it till after the study is done. So i will update you all with how this journey goes. Im not getting my hopes up but staying positive!

[MyhopeSomeday25]

That is really Interesting.. I had an endoscopy done almost two years ago and all they said I had was hpylori.. I always felt like it took forever for my food to digest cause i can eat and still throw up food hours later.. I started taking apple cider vinegar to mimic stomach acid juice...keep us updated

[sun123]

To whatdidido,

I feel this great progress on your behalf and would be very interested with progress updates.

Did the doctor know what the hard mass was made of? (vegetables, hair…)

Also you said they saw benign fundic gland polyps in your stomach, how would this be treated? (surgery? medication? do they go away on their own?)

Good Luck

[Corpsebreath]

This bezoar you have in your stomach. You think it's possible it's been there since your bb started? Why didn't he remove it?

[whatdidido]

I don't really know when it occurred, what i do know is that when i visited Africa, i lost a lot of weight due to eating only organic food/non chemicals for four months,and also i was extremely sick about every 5-7 days. Once i returned, within about two-three months, i developed bad breath. I also wasn't eating very well. I have always been bad with carbs (cakes, chocolate etc) and i was also on night shift at the time, so i would eat dinner and go to sleep within the same 20 minutes and I've been told hat your body isnt very good at digesting food while you are asleep or it slows down... So my only explanation for this is that the mix of bad diet, and bad sleeping patterns after not eating any type of processed food or sugar might have caused a disruption in my stomach. Also, the gastro specialist told me i probably have IBS which could have come about from catching a bug while i was there which may have just messed up the whole make up of my stomach environment. This is all entirely confusing to me and I'm trying to explain the best i can, but thats pretty much what i understood from him. I don't know what the bezoar is made up of, and it didn't look anything like the photos I've seen online, it just looked like calcified food, yellowish in colour just built up in one big mass. My stomach is literally rock hard after i eat, and i can eat something today for lunch, and puke it up the next morning while I'm brushing my teeth, which is a tell tale sign of having gastroparesis. I have to take the gastric emptying study before i can 100% confirm with you all that this is what it is. And i am assuming that is why he didn't mention surgery to remove the bezoar or anything extreme yet because nothing is for certain at the moment. That is scheduled for February 11th and then i have to start taking metamucil and align for two weeks then i can begin taking motillium which is suppose to speed the emptying of my stomach up. I am extremely tempted to just starting taking the motillium now cause i don't want to wait a month but id like to see if i actually do have this medical condition!! As for the polyps in my stomach, he didn't revisit that with me at all, he just said that they are completely harmless, i will bring that up when i see him again! I have been taking apple cider vinegar every morning, as well as lemon juice with water whenever i drink water and that doesn't help at all with my digestion. I can honestly say, absolutely nothing...NOTHING at all, diet change, supplements, and every other experimental thing I've tried from this site and other research online has given me even 5 minutes of relief. That is why i believe that this has to be my problem. Again, i don't want to get my hopes up because going through that tonsillectomy did ***k all for me, and i still haven't gotten over that devastation and I'm pretty much at the lowest level in my life at the moment, so i will definitely update you all as i find out more information.

[Corpsebreath]

Hey, how are you doing? Did you go through with the gastric emptying study?