Hey everyone.
In advance, sorry for any grammar/spelling mistakes, english is not my first language.
So about 10,5 weeks ago (on July 24th) I felt sick out of a sudden and couldn’t eat anymore without feeling really, really bad, up to the point where I felt like I had to throw up any moment.
I went to a doctor after a couple days without it getting better, got some meds and took them as instructed, but they didn’t change anything. I then went to the doctor again, got some meds that suppress the feeling of having to throw up, so I could eat normally (I had already lost a couple kilograms at that point) and scheduled an appointment in the hospital for an endoscopy. Turns out it’s really hard to get appointments for that and since it wasn’t an emergency I had to wait several weeks.
The meds I took did help, but did not remove that unwell-feeling entirely, also I could only take one a day and when I did in the morning, its effect had worn off in the evening.
So while I was waiting for my endoscopy (I was in the hospital from August 28th to 30th), I couldn’t eat as much as I needed to. I lost even more weight, dropping down to a BMI of 16,4 (56kg, I’m about 185cm tall), which is not nearly enough.
Then the appointment eventually came, I got that endoscopy done and they found an infection in my duodenum. So far so good, at least I then knew what all of this was about.
But they couldn’t find what caused it, so they told me it’s very likely I just have a sensitive stomach (there’s a medical expression for it but I couldn’t find english translation for it online), which basically means that when I (for example) drink lots of coffee every morning for many days in a row, eat paprika in excessive amounts or am very stressed, something like this can occur.
That shouldn’t really impact my life much (it didn’t for the last 19 years either), it’s just that maybe I should eat something or have a tea in the morning before I drink coffee.
Before all this started, I visited my family, who have a super cool coffee machine, which means while I stayed there for about a week, pretty much the first thing I did every morning was drinking coffee. I think that’s where it came from.
So they told me that and gave me other meds that were supposed to get rid of the infection within 2 weeks. After 2 weeks it wasn’t gone and I went to the doctor again, who told me to take the same meds another 2 weeks. These 4 weeks were over 8 days ago. It has definitely gotten better, but it’s not gone. I was hoping for it to be gone, because on some days I felt like it was. That’s why I haven’t been to the doctor again until today, I’m currently in the doctor’s waiting room.
I don’t know what I’ll be told today but I’m scared and I begin to lose hope for it to ever get better. Since my time in the hospital I’ve gained a bit of weight again, but I’m still underweight.
Because they told me that something like this might occur when being very stressed, the thought crossed my mind that my depression and mental problems in general prevent it from getting better and it’s making me feel even more hopeless. Just a couple days after it started, my then girlfriend broke up with me and I haven’t gotten over that yet and it troubles me every day. I also already think about suicide a lot when I’m healthy and this has been getting so frustrating that I am thinking about ending it more and more.
I look and am really exhausted.
I haven’t enjoyed eating for almost 11 weeks now, with good food being one of the major things in my life that bring me joy.
I really hope my doctor has a solution for me today, at this point I don’t even care anymore what it is. I want this to be over, go back to my normal life. I can’t get anything done, because car and train rides make me feel sick. I’ve been spending the last 2 months doing literally nothing but staying at home and wasting my time. Luckily I was on summer break and didn’t have any lectures, but the new semester starts today and if I won’t be able to attend (I go to my uni by train) I’ll fall behind very soon.
I’ve already made plans to end it all if I won’t get any at least slightly good news today. I’m not sure if I’d actually get myself to doing it, but I have questioned if my life is actually worth living before this and now I do even more.
Also, I fear that even if it does get better soon, I’ll be scared of eating afterwards, because it might happen again. I already am not trying anything, I’m sticking to what I know I can eat, which is mostly bananas, soup, bread and oatmeal.
I’m pretty sure that these last 10 weeks have been some of the worst of my life. This sickness, combined with a heartbreak, which hurts so so much every day, and the worries about falling behind in uni, have been so exhausting, I look tired all the time and yet I can’t sleep well at night. I feel like I’m not myself anymore. Regardless of how depressed I was, I was always someone to genuniely joke and laugh about everything and take nothing too serious, pretty much no matter what it was. That has changed recently. I’ve been harming myself again after months without, I want to get drunk every evening and the only reason I don’t is because it definitely won’t make my sickness any better.
If nothing changes very, very soon, I don’t know for how much longer I can live like this.
If you read all the way until here, thank you so much for taking the time. I just needed a place to share my story, I haven’t told my family everything, they only know I am feeling a bit unwell at the moment, because I don’t want to make them too worried, and I feel like no one else cares.
Edit: I’ve been told to take the same meds for another 2 weeks but this time take it in the evening before I go to sleep instead of taking it in the morning. Doc said if it’s not better then she’ll forward me to the hospital a second time and we’ll see if someone there knows what to do (my doctor is just a general doctor and not someone specialized in stomach problems). Honestly, she seemed rather confused to me and like she didn’t really know what to do. It’s better than nothing but I had still hoped for a better solutions. I just hope it works somehow.