Starving to death in middle class USA.

I didn’t have an easy childhood. As long as I can remember I have had tummy issues. It was never anything too serious but always seemed to be on some antacid or other stomach medication. A lot of doctors assumed it was stress from being in and out of foster care and abuse. No one thought to test if my stomach was actually working.

November 2009 I was diagnosed with Gastroparesis after throwing up for two weeks. I knew a lot about the disease thanks to my mother. She had been diagnosed many years before me. We were told over and over it’s not genetic. They say hers was caused by diabeties. I’m not diabetic. Two of my children now also suffering from this same disease are also not diabetic. My mother passed away Christmas morning 2014 from complications associated with Gastroparesis. She starved to death. Even more shocking…she did so with a feeding tube. The body just wouldn’t absorb it.

Three years ago I was miserable at 357 lbs with a disease no one understood. Tell people your stomach doesn’t work when you are morbidly obese and they don’t look at you the same as when I tell them the same thing at 109 lbs. Back then, everything I ate seemed to stay in my body forever. And my body sucked the life out of whatever was in there. Our bodies do not absorb all that it could from food. We don’t need it to. Mine was. It didn’t matter what diet i tried or new work out i just kept gaining. I also was getting sicker and sicker so we decided to do the same surgery my mother had a month prior. Its basically a revised gastric bypass. I remember waking up in recovery feeling hungry. I never felt hugry I just ate at meal times. I also belched….I hadn’t done that in years. The little girl in me thought I was cured.

My mother was dead less than six months from her surgery. All her gastroparesis symptoms returned a few weeks after her surgery. I figured I was next. For two years I was symptom free. I lost weight, i worked out, I went hiking! I had reclaimed my life! I also met a man who would see past a lot of heartache and prove to me love is real!

And then it came back.

I struggle to get food in everyday. I have had 2 days since June 6, 2018, that I didnt throw up. Yeah just two days in almost 10 months. I have never been this small. And I am running out of time.

I lost weight so fast that the pads around my arteries in my abdomen are gone and now those arteries are pinching off my intestines. A disorder referred to as SMAS. Superior mesenteric artery syndrome (SMAS) is a digestive condition that occurs when the duodenum (the first part of the small intestine) is compressed between two arteries (the aorta and the superior mesenteric artery). This compression causes partial or complete blockage of the duodenum.

I’m starving to death. The goal and focus now is to get my heart to a place that we can do TPN feedings. All so we can buy time to find a cure. My children lost their grandmother to this. They are watching their mother waste away as they too are dropping weight too fast and scared they will be exactly where I am.