Gastroparesis

 Gastroparesis

 

    Not too long after transplant I would struggle with gastroparesis. I dealt with this for a few years and sometimes it would suddenly flare up for seemingly no reason. When I would eat, I would get immediately full and need to stop after just a few bites. My stomach would turn sour and I'd feel bloated. I also had sour burps and I would feel nauseous. This is common among transplant patients as the vagus nerve often gets nicked during surgery. This made it hard for me to eat and gain weight. It also interfered with the absorption of my antirejection medicine, and my dose always needed constant tweaking. To diagnose this properly, I had to do a gastric-emptying scan. This consisted of eating radioactive eggs and toast or oatmeal, and then doing a series of abdominal scans. This procedure could last 4-5 hours. The test confirmed I had gastroparesis and I was given a medicine called Reglan to take four times a day to aid in my delayed gastric emptying. This helped a lot but I had no intentions of staying on this medicine permanently as I heard it caused a few permanent side effects, such as tardive dyskinesia. Over time, my stomach would get better. As I mentioned, it would flare up again and I did another gastric emptying scan that showed that I was having another small bout of delayed emptying. I noticed one of my blood pressure medicines, labetalol,  seemed to aggravate the condition and I was switched to a new one. As time passed, my vagus nerve may have healed, because I have never experienced trouble with this again.